


Bendin' Over

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Series: Hancock: The Ass Man [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Body Worship, F/M, Masturbation, Smut, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-05-29 13:58:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 54,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6378829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hancock's got a little obsession...and it's the vault girl's ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He'd been quite nearly literally and completely figuratively thunderstruck by her ass even before Finn’s blood had a chance to coagulate. In fact, John was pretty sure the red was still spilling when he watched her turn around, a satisfied smirk still on his face as she bent over to calm the mutt snapping spit at her thighs. The vault suit was like slick paint in the rain, soaked and snug tight around those twin curves separating bubbled flesh and toned thigh. 

Hancock wouldn’t have known then, but the rest of her was just as delicious as that slice of rump he wanted to shove in his face. The mask that hung over her head that evening hid the soft, flushed skin of her cheeks - the pout of her lips and those cat-like eyes that he'd soon become so familiar.

Under the filthy canvas, he swore he saw her grinning as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. But what woman wouldn't hit him across the face for what his mind was conjuring up right then. 

She was real fine if that were the case. Damn fine, if anyone wanted his opinion. Damn fucking fine indeed. 

“Dogmeat. Heel, boy. Only when I give the word,” she whispered that last little command, muffled under the fabric, peering over at him passed the metal encased ball of her shoulder. There was a flash under the thick safety glass of her goggles. Droplets of rain slipped over her shine covered eyes, throwing the lights from his town back at him like a dying holotape. 

Striking, even without seeing her face, John thought, trying to keep the edges of his cool smile from turning into anything too telling. Sure, he wanted to slide his tongue down the crack of her ass and eat her soul out, but the woman didn’t need to see all that on his handsome visage, so he kept his smirk small and his eyes easy. 

Finn hung limp in a pile, steaming in the rain like a roadblock between them anyway and he had to make a show of why he was that way and not how badly he wanted to throw her down on his sofa. John wanted to stuff his face in the slick of her where his chin could rest on her soft ass and his tongue could pull all those animal grunts out of her. He wanted to suck at her sweet spots and dig his fingers in her ass until she whimpered.

The shine changed over her goggles, and the line of her shoulders bowed up - distrusting. Too smart as well, he knew then.

His grin widened as he flickered the bloody water off the end of his knife, making a real good show of wedging the blade between his hip and the old red, white and blue that sagged with the rain. Her masked face tilted and he knew, without a doubt, she was eyeing the knife like it was a loaded fat man. John would have been a liar had he said her hesitation didn’t set him off like a ball-ironed cannon. Nothing like striking fear in the hearts of luscious women.

“Like I said, sister. Everyone's welcome,” he repeated, watching her turn her gaze down on the corpse between them. The silence he got was more telling than most people's words. A sarcastic ‘really?’ was etched into the line of her body. What a sleek body that was too, he admired perhaps too openly.

Hancock gave a huff of dark amusement, peeling an unabashed look off her hips, “As long as you remember who's in charge, of course.”

“Noted,” she clipped, taking the mutt by the collar as she stepped around him. She was all too eager to get away from him he realized later that night, and later still he’d find that he didn’t like it like he liked most types of fear or disgust. Her masked face followed him briefly before she went to watching her feet on the broken cobblestone streets, avoiding the deep holes of water. The dog at her side followed close, turning a wet, sprinkled muzzle back and forth to look up at John and it’s owner.

Hancock winked at the mutt, but that ass of hers pulled him back in like a port in the storm.

John smirked, enjoying the final view of her rear bouncing around the corner. Maybe it was just the suit that made it look so sweet. He couldn’t recall ever seeing anyone wearing one before. Could be that those prewar assholes designed the suit to accentuate the female curves all tail-chasin’ men admired. John figured dwellers would be more apt to continue the population if they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and his hands were itching to grasp those twin globes of flesh. Just sink his fingers into the meat of her and spread her open for a real solid-

“You finished, boss?”

Fahrenheit watched him from the State House, leaning on the door frame with a telling look. ‘You’ve been standing there way too long, idiot.’ Her eyes narrowed at him through the rain.

“You’d think you’ve got nothing better to do than spoil the fun sometimes, sweetheart,” he threw the grumbled words her way, watching the last spot he’d seen the vaultie before she’d disappeared into his magnificent town of misfits and miscreants. A beautiful body like that could get into easy trouble in Goodneighbour, and he itched to be part of that trouble. 

“Those pawns are upstairs waiting for you.”

Ah, but work came before play these days - the responsibilities of the title he'd earned.

He shook his coat of the excess rainwater, surveyed the carnage and gave Fin a soft jab with the toe of his boot before grinning to himself, “Send for a couple of The Watch to clean this mess up will ya.” It was an order, and as he stepped inside, out of the pour of rain, he could hear the disposal of yet another lipy asshole getting tossed over the wall.

Served the prick right, tryin’ to rip off such a smooth little lady.

The meeting with the heads of Covenant went about as fast as his life had up until that point. The large Mayor before him never seemed to cease babbling about their similarities - about their virtues. Charity. Forgiveness. A man sews what he reaps and all that bullshit that made a man feel just without having to lift a finger. The frail woman beside him never spoke a word, just watched with the kind of meek disposition meant for arm candy. The caravan guards turned-bodyguards hung just as quietly to the side and only when the meeting was finished, and they were leaving with what they came for, did John hear the woman mutter down the stairs. 

‘He’s not what I expected…’

Good or bad, Hancock figured that didn’t matter. The night was still young and somewhere in the recesses of his town was a vault girl with an ass that was begging for a good worshippin’. His boots were kicked up on his desk in his usual deep thought position. A bottle of whiskey was resting on his knee, hard and not near empty enough to justify the time of night. Fahrenheit was watching out the window, watching the ‘pawns’ leaving no doubt.

“Who insists on leaving in the middle of a storm like this - rats that’s who. They scamper off like greedy vermin,” she spoke her words, seething them to the window.

John shrugged and took a thick swallow from his dinner, “You can’t be too dramatic, I gave them half of what they wanted. No one gets anything free of charge from ol’ Hancock,” he licked his lips with a smirk, “despite the rumors.”

A moment of silence passed between them, comfortable and healing after the none stop haggling their guests had sought to torture him by.

The patter of rain ebbed the journey of alcohol through his system and even past it all he could hear the dim drum of tunes filtering up from the Third Rail. Tempting, he thought, and maybe that vaultie would be there. He thought about hefting himself off this couch so he join her, where he could spot her over the din and buy her a nice stiff one - throw in a sly little look that insinuated he had another stiff one for her in the back room...just for her.

What he wouldn’t give right now to slide his dick between her cheeks and squeeze himself until he popped.

Only ass he ever saw so perfect was faded in those dirty pre-war mags he collected as a young man. He didn't even think something like her could exist outside those pages. Just thinking about it was making the blood flood between his legs, urging one of those rare and normally annoying erections to form. Usually, it took more than just the sight of a fine ass to get him at full mast, but he'd be a liar if he said he didn't have to readjust himself right there with his door wide open and his ever loyal and charming bodyguard just a stone's throw away. He dug his heel between his balls and inner thigh, eyes pinching as the pressure faded somewhat. Fahrenheit gave him a disgruntled look beyond her usual disdain when he finally looked up, his hand still on his growing concern.

“What?” He asked in feigned mortification, then winked, “ A man can't get himself comfortable?”

John laughed when Fahrenheit just sneered, showing him her back to look out the window again. There was no way their ‘guests’ were still out there in the downpour.

John sunk into the couch like it was a sandy beach, enjoying the foul mood he may or may not have put his bodyguard in. She was too easy to make uncomfortable sometimes. 

“It looks like our ‘constituents’’ are tied up with your damsel in distress…”

He was up and off the couch in a second flat, knocking the whiskey off his lap to the floor and not sparing a glance at the alcohol abuse on his way to the window. Fahrenheit grunted as he pushed her, hip in hers, out of the way. She called him some slur, arms crossed over the thick polymer plating on her chest and while he could feel the burn of her glare he couldn’t give much of a shit as he peered out the window. Sure, the rain obscured his view to a point, but the vaultie had her back to the State House and damn...there her ass was. 

John chuckled lowly while the woman behind him tapped her foot in annoyance.

His eyes trailed up the backs of the vautie’s thighs, over that round curve of her rump and up and up - past the dimples on her lower back, up the gentle arch of her spine and...the wet hair covering her shoulders.

Unmasked.

She was speaking animatedly to the sickly woman that said not a word to him the whole evening he'd been stuck in his office with her. The woman was smiling, mouth moving in actual speech. What the hell…

Quickly he snatched at his smokes, lit a fresh one and threw the balcony doors open. The rain soaked his shoulders, but the brim of his hat kept the rain off his face, and the simmering smoke pinched between his lips. He leaned on the banister, catching a glimpse of the side of her face. High cheekbones, he noted. A little button chin maybe. Slender neck and a couple of glittering gems in her ear lobe. 

Something happened to her posture then. John sucked in a lung full of sweet, sweet nicotine as her spine went stiff, her shoulders bunching. The dog at her thighs was looking at him, blinking away the water. Smart mutt, he thought, lifting the corner of his mouth as the dog started to pant, licking water off his nose.

The muffled, rain-drenched conversation ended a few minutes later, and suddenly the vaultie turned around, finding him almost immediately on his balcony, smoking a cigarette while he eavesdropped rather stealthily. He’d bet all the chems in his storerooms that she was more put together than the woman in his magazines. Smoky, cat-eyes narrowed against the rain, half-glaring up at him. Sharp cheekbones and baby cheeks with an adorable chin that frame a slender nose and lips that were made for pouting. She looked way less intimidating without the mask; it was no wonder she wore it when she was walkin’ around with the face of an angel.

Feeling cheekier than usual, John tipped his hat at her, wagging his brows as his smoke hung loosely between his lips. Some people called him charming, but this woman - the bane of his cock should he say - didn’t seem so charmed. Her eyes ate through him or attempted too.

The dog at her side barked once, then twice, breaking her gaze. She frowned, stroked the wet fur on its head and then, just like that she was gone, but he saw where she’d hidden. The Third Rail. And he happened to know the man, or ghoul, who owned the place…

Inside his office, he found nothing but judgment and barely contained insults. Fahrenheit looked murderous which was amusing since he’d offered himself to her whims way back when she asked for a job, and she’d turned him down. 

‘No need to be jealous, sweetheart.’

“Get word to Charlie that her drinks are free for the night,” he told her, teething his cigarette s he rolled his soaking wet coat off his shoulders, hanging it on the rack. 

“Should I give her the key to the State House while I’m at it?”

“One move at a time, Fee,” he teased.

“Asshole.”

“Mayor Asshole,” he corrected, stubbing out the end of his smoke with a toothy grin. When Fahrenheit closed the double doors behind her, off to execute his free drinks order, he settled back down in the comforts of his couch with a shooter of jet and an itchy heat in his gut. Arousal, he realized. As much as Hancock played the womanizer he hadn’t had many opportunities to wet his whistle and the lust he lived with day to day before his change had simmered considerably. The errant boner still troubled him, but they weren’t linked to much more than a change in temperature or some old dream he could never recall. 

The times he was sought out for a quick fuck seemed like chores - like a thing he ought to do because when would the next time be? Not much to it and he could count on one hand how many times he’d blown his load since his skin started to melt. But, if he was an honest man, he wanted to ram his cock as far up this vaultie as he could physically manage and maybe die there while he was at it. With both hands gripping her ass on his way out, of course.

If John had been sure how late Fee would be gone he may have pulled his ol’ little Hancock out and flushed the tension out of his joints, but alas she was a quick one and the few minutes he took to weigh his options, she was already back. A nasty little smirk on her chapped lips.

“I sent Harvey to tell ‘im. Said to him, 'Tell the lucky lady our good Mayor had her covered for the evening.'” Her expression would have been mean if he wasn’t used to her teasing by now, “Told him to be ‘real’ nice about it.”

Harvey was a build son of a bitch, stacked hard in the shoulders and cut with one of those jaws that had him enough pussy at the bar to be jealous of if he wanted. The tan skin didn’t hurt either. In the real world, Hancock could see a man like Harvey scoring with a perfect looking woman like the vaultie…

“You trying to get me out of my office, huh? All you had to do was ask for a little privacy you know,” John forced a seething grin, “No judgments here.”

“You wanna know the reason you make such a great Mayor, Hancock?” She asked, smooth around a bent cigarette, looking like a hellion put solely on this earth to torture him.

John shrugged, still trying to ignore that curl of lust and now jealousy from morphing into a sour stomach in his gut.

“Pussy or dick or whatever combination or singularity of the two never distracted you. Unless you want people to think it does,” Fahrenheit took a thick puff of smoke, paused for effect and let the trail of white curl out her nostrils like a mad brahmin, “You go changing that and you’ll have more than pawns and knights to deal with.”

That lecture had the desired effect on him he figured. Later in the night, when his town had gone quiet, he managed to find it in him to be upset that she’d kept him where she wanted him, planted on his couch with his legs kicked up, stewing in a stupor of mentats, jet and a fifth of scotch. 

Damn she-devil, messin’ up his fun and playin’ mommy like an old hag. Harvey was still gone, a fact that Fahrenheit found great pleasure in informing him before she turned in for the night. Dicky hung out by the door, turned the radio down low and watched the halls once the clock ticked to three in the morning, his usual bedtime. It would be easy to tip his tricorn down, kick off his boots and sleep off the chems and alcohol but the itch lingered and soon he was shifting his hips as his cock pushed against the seam of his pants. 

Somewhere in his heart he was sure there was more to the girl than her fantastic ass and even more beautiful face, but his cock would hear none of that and with an elaborate sigh, he arched his hips off the couch - the springs squeaking obnoxiously as he fiddled with the button and clasp. The familiar weight and warmth of his cock filled his palm and...yeah - that felt better than he thought it would. Just his own touch sent a little shiver down his spine, making his legs feel like jelly. 

He fell back into the couch, sunk in a boneless slump as he savored the first few lazy strokes, from base to tip. The wet smear of his precum on the third or fourth stroke down made his shoulders shake with pleasure. Been too long now that he thought about it. A good rub down every couple of weeks would do him some good. Besides, sometimes blowing a healthy load was better than the combination of chems. No nasty side effects either.

The rain hit his window noisily, clouding out anything beyond the four walls and his couch. His door was locked; the lights were turned down and for once he wasn’t focused on the unpleasant scratch of his radiated flesh on the smoother expanse of his dick. 

The jet was still relatively fresh around his brain, helping to throw reality out the door. It was easier to pretend the slow motions of his palm was, in fact, the globes of her warm ass as she churned her hips up and down, sighing deliciously at the friction. At that point, it’d be no difficult task to press her rear up a little further, admire the edible curves and let gravity stuff his cock up inside her...all...the way...to the…

John jerked, his orgasm surging up suddenly. He bit down on his tongue hard enough to taste blood and threw his hips up and down, fucking his tight fist until that hot leak raced up his thighs, down his stomach and spurted out the tip of his cock. Strings of cum shot out, flying violently as his fist jerked out the pleasure like he was running a piston in his lap and not a cock.

No warnin’ on that one...

“Damn it,” he seethed, sucking in a hard breath at the sight of his sticky cum covering a good portion of the chems scattered over his desk. 

“That’s real...unfortunate.”

Really fuckin’ unfortunate, he thought as he caught his breath. The pleasure was still swimmin’ in a sea of chems and liquor, but hell, if he let that mess dry it’d be even worse to clean up. Could always throw ‘em away, though. Not like he was hurting for chems these days. It was hard enough to muster the desire to fuck himself...cleaning up the resulting mess held even less appeal and this? He eyed the droplets of off-white cum and groaned. 

No need to waste good chems. After all, he might as well get used to watching where he shot his load. Something told him if she hung around like he hoped she would, he’d have to get used to the consequences of jerking off again. Not that he ought to complain. Best fuckin’ orgasm he’d had in a long while...and his mind could get a lot more filthy than just a good rear end visual.

A lot more filthy…


	2. Chapter 2

Nora attempted, as poised as she could, to enter the bar like she would have before the bombs, heel to heel with that calm nonchalance she used to be so practiced at. It was just one foot planted in front of the other. One, two, three and onward. It was just walking from the base of the stairs - the long and narrow sink into hell - and then over to the barstool she knew would be there. The clouds of smoke cut around her, making her beeline for the stool a hazy labyrinth, made worse by the heat of bodies fogging up her goggles.

The scratchy canvas brushing her nose and chin picked up the smell of the room; a suffocating grip of chem fumes, beer rot and something sweet like dried hubflowers. 

Nora was tired - tired long before putting on the frail act, but even more so now. 

The barstool called to her, providing a way to hide in a glass of something strong. It felt like everyone gave her a glance, some of the eyes lingering longer than others. Nora wanted to shrink, but what would that accomplish? Instead, she straightened her back, found her lower lip with her teeth and carried onward, ignoring the crystal eyes of the singer studying her. The melody was soothing, though. It was hard to deny that. Music always helped when she was teetering on the edge of a panic attack. That ghoul and the freshly dead body leaking at his feet had been the perfect end to a perfectly shit day…

Was it the death? Couldn’t have been - there was something else about the encounter that was unnerving, but what that was exactly she couldn’t quite grasp. Instead, she wanted to wash it away. Liquor would help with that...and a little something else as well.

Despite the panic surging in her throat, she managed to order a drink without choking. The fact that the bartender was a robot helped somehow.

It had been stupid of her to walk around outside without her hood on, but it was good to talk to another woman after the hellish journey through the Boston ruins and she’d been more friendly than most. There was something about this world that lacked in female company like she’d come to crave from before. Rarely was there anything to laugh at - to smile over with that carefree coating of comfort. Like old times, she thought, when she could stop in the middle of her journey to chat with a friend on the sidewalk. It had been even more pleasant to feel the droplets of rain running down her face while she listened to- 

She’d already forgotten her name...

Dogmeat simpered under the stool, napping. A good sign. When he was calm it usually meant there wasn’t much reason to be tense.

But that ghoul…

Her memory conjured up a ghastly image of him. A large smile of dangerous teeth with water sleuthing off his hat, dripping. A dark red slash against the wet blue backdrop of the city. He made her tense. He wasn’t a feral. They never dressed that well, nor did they have a penchant for word slang and comely smiles despite their faces being the way they were - but Nora got the feeling he wanted to eat her. She’d been looked at by hungry dogs and spit spewing feral ghouls in similar ways. 

If she’d found herself in this situation four months ago she would have been afraid, but now she knew better. Dumb she was not. She realized early on that she had a body that was more filled out than the general populace, but it had only gotten her a few flirtatious comments and some lingering eye-fucks - maybe she’d gotten a bit of action along the way thanks to her pre-war form...but nothing like what she saw in that ghoul's eyes. What ever was going through the head of this town’s elected Mayor had to have been seedy as all hell to put a look like the one he had on. The way he stared at her from that balcony…

She rubbed at her forearm, feeling gooseflesh erupt underneath the sodden material. Maybe it was time to trade out the suit for something less revealing, but it was durable. The weave was meant to withstand radiation, lasers and sometimes even bullets. It was flexible, perfect for sneaking around unnoticed and kept her cool when it was hot and kept her warm when it was cold and damp, like now. 

She’d be dry in a few minutes from now.

No, she’d keep the suit. It’d served her well so far and a few lecherous looks from a ghoulish Mayor wouldn’t force her to trade it out for some heap of rusting metal that would only throw her off when she needed to know how nimble she could be in that all too common life or death situation that was sure to come...sooner or later.

She slipped a mentat under her tongue discreetly despite the patrons on the couch behind her, huffing shooters of jet like they were going out of style. 

Not adverse to chems, she noted, letting the bitter paste soak under her tongue before lifting the sack hood to swallow down her double whiskey in two wide gulps. Ten minutes and the fear would abate, long enough for her to get a decent room for the night and sleep dreamlessly.

She was waving down her second drink - the chems and first drink kicking in and her suit halfway dry when a tall, beefy man slid in next to her, his posture all the promise of an offer she was all too quick to decline.

“Look,” she started; practiced, “I’m not-”

“Mayor Hancock sends his welcomes to Goodneighbour. He’d like to inform you that drinks tonight are on the house, Ma’am.”

She turned towards him, throwing a thigh over the other and watched as his eyes slid down into her lap before staring back into her goggles, smiling. Handsome, she first noted but the kindness wasn’t genuine. Albeit he seemed charming enough, she thought, feeling her lips tug into a small smile of their own. She was comforted to know that this man couldn’t see her pleased expression.

When she spoke, it came out hard just like it needed to,”Since he's buying have a drink with me then. Or don’t, I don’t care either way.”

The man scrambled for a seat next to her, rapping his knuckles quickly on the bar table, nodding at the eye stalk of the robot, “Usual, Charlie. The boss says she’s drinkin’ free tonight.”

The robot Charlie bristled as well as a Mr. Handy unit could, “On the house?! Blimey, he’s finally gone feral, that one. Sodding free, he says.”

Nora bit her lip, hiding the easy, amused smile. Mentats and booze worked wonders. She thanked whatever brilliant man had invented them, and that he invented too much for the past two-hundred years to deplete the supply.

“What are you having, toots?”

“Whiskey,” she muttered, rubbing the scruff of Dogmeat's neck as he sat up, resting his chin on her thigh. The dog was watching with hard eyes at the newcomer. A better dog than most - to be so good at watching her back. He sniffed at her thigh, snorted and then he was gone, judging the man harmless enough to go back to sleep. 

Nora fingered the rim of her second drink, suddenly unwilling to lift up her hood to take a swig. Why did she open her fucking mouth? The chems, she reminded herself, grimacing as she tapped a nail on the glass. Stupid and thoughtless. The mask was all part of the calm, remove that and what was left. Just her and the eyes...

“You gonna drink that?”

She rolled a shoulder, shrugging. If he got bored he’ll leave. Maybe that was her new goal now. 

She shifted and began to study the room through her goggles, watching a fair few people getting high. Most of them seemed content to enjoy their drinks or their chems in silence, enjoying the music and their solitude. A lot more ghouls here than most she realized. That was a good thing. Places like Diamond City reminded her of her University days. Too many uptight, pompous assholes that thought their lives were worth more than the poor - the downtrodden and beaten down. A fair amount of the settlements were home to ghouls and some of them were the kindest people she’d ever met. 

“Well, if you’re not gonna drink can I at least know the name of the dame I’m not drinking with?” He gave her a lipped smile - the smolder look that probably got him a fair share of trim. It was fetching she supposed, and hell...it got her talking.

“You can call me Ms. Crawford if you need something to occupy yourself with later,” she told him, wondering why she kept running her mouth when it was a dumb idea. Mentats were suppose to up her wit, not loosen her lips.

“Just a Miss, then? I’ll be damned…”

That stung, but it was hard to not feel flattered, she realized with defeat and she was about to give into her dry tongue, her fingers around the sag of material around her neck when a shiver crawled down her spine. She twisted, feeling that itch that someone was staring at her. Somewhere in the human evolution, there was an invisible organ that told you when to turn around. That little imaginary bead pulsed and she searched the glow of red lights and hazy smoke. She found him in a swath of red, a burning cigarette hanging off the edge of his mouth - the ember glowing in those ominous black eyes that stare right through her.

“Fuck,” she hissed, her fingers seizing in the canvas of her hood.

Sometimes fear and terror were better than this artificial calm. If she’d been on the brim of panic like she normally was her gut would have told her that the Mayor buying her drinks, especially after the royal eye fucking he gave her, was cause for concern. Instead of heading to the hotel with a procured bottle of booze she thought nothing of it and now...this.

Mayor Hancock was his name and he was showing her his teeth in a grin, growing ever closer until he was right next to her, throwing a hand up to the shoulder of his errand boy. It was eerily similar to the ‘friendly’ hand he had on the man she watched him shank earlier that evening.

“Take the rest of the night off, Harvey,” Hancock rasped, talking around his smoke with practiced ease. She couldn’t help but note the way his tongue kept the wet end in his mouth, flicking it inside his mouth. She swallowed. The heat under her hood was making her cheeks flush…

She wasn’t even two drinks in and the Mayor was here.

Harvey tipped his hat at her, looking disappointed but not about to ignore the ‘hint’. He was gone and just like that the ghoul had slid into the warm seat, looking rather smug and relaxed. The man moved like he had rubber for bones. Rather smooth for a ghoul. Nora had to admire the confidence.

“Charlie,” he called without taking his eyes off her.

“Ah! What can I get for you, boss?”

“Surprise me,” he said, winking at her just as she tilted her head making it more than obvious he had her attention. 

“So,” he continued, “I know of a little place in the back where you can lose the scarecrow getup. Or you can keep sippin’ the good stuff through that shit all night.”

Nora tapped her nail on the glass again, played a tune as she ran through her options and settled on the dumb one again. She nodded, putting a soft heel into Dogmeat as he scrambled to his legs. A bottle of something real old was set on the counter, along with two glimmering glasses. The Mayor took a pull of his smoke before grabbing the glasses and the booze and, quite charmingly, lead the way. 

Everyone watched as she followed him past a line of velvet dividers, down a hallway lit up in red where a door spray painted with the word ‘private’ was opened for her. The reek of his cigarette filtered in through her hood, but that she could ignore.

The inside of the room reeked of old sex, high proofed alcohol, and some chemical; unnatural. She was greeted with a violent imagine of the ghoul behind her fucking nameless women in this room, snapping his jaws and drive him hips into willing backsides. 

Nora’s throat wet dry and with a shaky hand she reached for her drink, cupping it in both hands.

She was cornered by three walls of peeling red paint, warm, orange bulbs sprinkling the ceiling and moldy curtains hanging where she assumed the walls were most destroyed. There was a table with four chairs in the corner, cards filling a bowl in the center, and at the heart of the room were two sofas and a table, scattered in empty ashtrays, low burning candles, and one lone chem box.

“Make yourself comfortable,” he motioned to the plush sofa with the most pillows.

She shifted her gaze over to him, watching through the safety of her goggles as his eyes skimmed down her side and over her ass before he sucked on the near dead smoke“...and I mean ‘real’ comfortable. I don’t think I could sleep at night if I knew someone in this town didn’t feel welcome.”

“I’m not stupid enough to not know what this is,” she replied as icily as she could manage with the feel-good chem soothing her nerves. To his credit Hancock didn’t seem thrown off by her response, just shut the door behind him and took a seat in the center of one of the sofas. So that’s what he was playing at? She couldn’t help but smile; impressed. Charming son of a bitch.

She took a seat across from him, setting her sweating glass on the table before letting loose a breath as she slid her goggles off her head. The hood was stifling, she admitted when it finally came off. The ghoul across from her made a pleased sound at the blush in her cheeks and the mess of her hair. Perhaps he liked a woman that looked as run down as she did…

“Well, hello there, sister,” he drawled, the sound, even more telling with the rasp in his throat, “nice of you to join the party. I hope I haven’t made a bad impression so far.”

She found herself smirking despite how exposed she was, “I’ve seen worse,” she admitted, finally taking a nice swallow of her drink. It was gone in another gulp - the burn flowing down her throat and outward. She was suddenly grateful for the mentat in her system. It would do good for her to be on good terms with the Mayor after all and that’d never happen if she ran off with her tail between her legs. Dogmeat, speaking of which, was nonplussed by the whole situation. Already he was at her feet, kicking in a figure of sleep.

Hancock watched her under hooded eyes. He looked high, but she figured the eyes he had could give him that look without the chems. She wasn’t sure enough to let her guard down, despite her loyal mutt as relaxed as could be. The music filtered in through the door and something smokey reached her nostrils. He was still watching her lazily, eyes running around the slopes of her face and neck, rarely straying lower which she appreciated as much as she...didn’t?

Eventually, his cigarette burned down too low and he was forced to move, plucking it from his mouth to snub out in the ashtray. He poured heavy glasses of whatever dark liquor was in the unmarked bottle. A small white residue from a long gone label told her it was prewar. Real vintage, she realized, almost chuckling. There had been at least two old friends of hers that would have knocked over a gaggle of people to get a glass of whatever this was.

“Where’re you travelin’ from? Seemed like our dear departed friend Fin caught you at a bad time, hm?” He sank back in the cushion with his drink, taking a slow swallow, before resting the glass on his spread thigh.

She could lie to him, and she should perhaps, but she didn’t want to. Fucking mentats - a real double edged sword.

“I heard there was a woman here that could help me, Dr. Amari. Nick Valentine said I’d find her at the Memory Den, but alas it’s closed…”

“Storms can throw you off your game, but really? Who gives a shit if it’s noon or midnight,” he kicked up a boot on the table, smirking when her eyes darted around him. Instinctual, she told herself - just watching for that knife, but then she realized where her eyes had drifted and turned her stare down, swirling her drink. Don’t give him the wrong idea, she told herself. Getting caught with her gaze between his legs would certainly provoke a reaction.

“If you’re in a tight spot,” he whispered, gentle almost, “I can hide you at my place until Dr. Amari can see you. No catch.”

Nora stiffened, eyed him. The black orbs in his sunken face watched her, glistening in the low light - something more, something secret there. Not just a tail-chaser then, she thought. His sympathy and willingness to help such...people threw her for a loop. She was aware of the Doctor’s involvement in synth rehabilitation. But it wasn't what she expected him to say in the least. But he must have assumed and she held nothing against synths, but she didn’t want to be labeled as one either.

“That’s...not what I am-not what I'm here for.”

His eyes widened a fraction; surprise or maybe wariness. 

She set her drink down, shifted forward and reassured him, “I’m not, but I’m glad there’s a place for them to find...something, anything to help get by. The fact that she has the technology to clear-”

‘Hey now, sister. I don’t need to know the details about what our good Doctor does in her spare time. For the people by the people and all that, even if those people are more sturdy than bone. You need to talk to Amari and I’ll make it happen,” he was grinning by the time he said the last word, nursing his drink once again. 

“Well, I may have misjudged you, Mayor Hancock,” she started, offering him a peaceful smile. He cocked a brow her way, resting his drink back over his thigh. There was something about the way he carried himself she couldn’t name, but she realized then, as she held her hand out to him across the table, “The names Nora.”

She liked it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to continue this. I have like something of 30k words of this I've been playing with. Will be updating as I proofread it all and find out where I want this to end. Let me know what you all think. I miss my ghouls and I have quite a bit of stuff stored away I'm planning on unleashing against the will of the internet. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Leave me a comment if you feel so inclined.


	3. Chapter 3

The next month went by like a fever dream. The monotony of the job that always made him itch was only dissected by the girl he came to know as Nora. She spent a solid week in his town all thanks to Valentine. It had been good to see the old heap of junk, but the synth knew he brought bad memories with him, so luckily his visits had been short. Nora on the other hand, ventured into his office every day that week, sharing some drinks under the guise of keeping him informed on what they were doing. Bare bones of course, but enough that he was reassured she wasn’t causing any potential harm to come to his people. Thankfully she always brought her vault suit covered ass with her. An asset she finally ‘caught’ him admiring.

‘Why don’t you take a picture, Mr. Mayor, it’ll last a lot longer.’

Might be he could spare some film on her if he knew where to get his hands on any, of course. He wasn’t as ashamed about all the jerking off he’d been doing either, surprisingly. Though having a picture of her might cause him some self-harm what with the amount of control he had when it came to her. Let her show him one sign of interest and he’d devour her like a starving man, savor her ass in his hands and drink from her for days and days. 

His fixation on Nora didn't go unnoticed by his loyal bodyguard either, though she didn't seem quite as charmed by Nora as he was. Fahrenheit would keep her arms crossed by the door whenever Nora left, stewing silently before making some offhand remark about her, some of which went without saying.

“She's trouble.”

Hancock settled back into the couch one wet night - a night much like the one he met Nora on. He fit himself comfortably into the ten-year-old indent that hugged his own ass perfectly before tossing Fahrenheit a low smirk. “You gonna take back your earlier assessment then?”

“Pawns can be tricky bitches. She's no queen if that's what you want me to say. “

John twirled a shooter of jet between his fingers, staring off at the space between himself and the tower of alcohol on his table. Trouble, he thought.

Nora was trouble, but not for Fahrenheit, just his own normally reserved sexual appetites. Unfortunately for her, poor Fee had caught him with his trousers down one afternoon, spanking himself to a particularly vivid scenario involving his current obsession. Was gonna be a damn good finish too, but she’d ruined the whole thing by producing a plethora of noises. She tried to shame him, damn her she tried, but Hancock had a long time to get used to his own body and it honestly didn’t take long to accept that as long as Nora had a place in his mind he’d be jerking off to her.

“You got an itch you can't scratch don't you?” she asked him with no small amount of veiled disgust, glaring. 

“Not to bring forth gory memories, Fee, but I can scratch this itch if I want to,” John told her, not looking away from the blurry array of booze. 

“Should I give you a moment, then?”

Hancock rolled his head to the side, finding Fahrenheit smirking, mean and dirty with her hand on the door knob. He waved her off, not taking the bait, but letting her go as she pleased. Everyone deserved a night to themselves once in awhile. Besides, the three guards outside would cover his frail self, safe enough while he let himself enjoy his own self-indulgent stupor. 

Halfway through a bottle of whiskey and one handful of berry mentats later, a tuned knock hit his door. 

“Yeah?” he called, kicking his heels up on his desk, swirling the remnants of booze in the bottle. Almost empty, he noted. He was well and truly fucked by that point. Whoever was on the other end of the door would be surely disappointed in his communication skills.

“Boss,” Harvey grumbled through the wood, “got’s you Ms. Nora here. She wants a word.”

John grinned, feeling his night getting ten times better, “Send her in.”

Harvey made a muffled noise and the door clicked. Hancock shifted, slid his knife from his hip and caressed the worn cotton of his pants leg just as the sweet smell of his favorite girl drifted in, followed by the soft creak of the floorboards under her boots. 

“Well look who it is,” he grinned, watching her out the side of his eye, “trouble with the good ol’ Doc? - or did you just miss me, peaches?”

There was a bare smirk on her lips, but she was a cool slice of perfection despite how he caught the shimmer of anxiety in her eyes. “I could come back another time if you’re...indisposed.”

“Nonsense,” he assured her, waving his bottle about the room. “What you see is what you get, so you get just me. With limited faculties of course,” he added, laying his head back and gazing up at her with itchy eyes.

She was sporting that vault suit still, wet from the dripping rain outside. He realized he might be a bit too high to be around her without letting slip a few filthy suggestions. John watched her give him an incredulous look, sliding a hand up one hip to add to the effect. She could chastise him any day if she looked like that doing it.

“Mind if I sit?” she nodded to the sofa opposite him, still smiling.

“What do they say where you're from again? My castle, your castle?”

Her lips turned up, cheeks dimpling like a child's, “Something like that.” 

She looked naive when she smiled, which explained the hood she still wore around town sometimes. Cute as a button. Not exactly the best look if you wanted to survive. Not a good look when half the town wanted to jump her bones...himself included. Inviting - that’s what her smile was.

Nora bent over, wiping off old grit from the cushions, granting him another unhindered view of delicious perfection. At this point, she knew very well what it did to him. The tease. 

Hancock watched, eyes drooping and somewhere in his mind, he heard Fahrenheit warning him to watch himself. But his cock woke up without his say so as Nora twisted her hips before plunking herself with a tired sigh across from him. There was no way in hell he wasn’t going to beat himself off as soon as she left tonight. He could already feel that nervous, excited energy that he was getting used to again - that sweet eager need to find a completion the chems just couldn’t bring him these days.

“I met Bobbie this evening.”

John gripped the handle of his knife. His heart thudded in bad memories, plastering on a calm, lazy grin, “One of our more mischievous troublemakers. Can't say she's much of a fan of yours truly.”

“No, she wasn't singing your praises exactly. In fact, she told me how she plans on robbing your storerooms as soon as I meet her over in Diamond City.”

Hancock sneered, “I'd ask you how you know that already, but you've worked that magic tongue on me before…”

Shit. Dead silence followed that little slip-up, but her eyes only twinkled a second before she shrugged, “I refused to help her unless I knew the target and the first lie she told me was a rotten attempt. The second one I got lucky with. I can’t imagine she’d lie about ripping you off when I’m rather certain you handle that sort of stuff nonverbally.”

“Is that so?” John took the last swig of whiskey. Bobbie planning on cleaning him out wasn't surprising. Power gave you enemies and he was making a lot of those lately. Another reason to find himself a different venue sooner rather than later. He gave Nora a look that she returned with suspicion, teething her inner cheek as she waited for him to continue. John didn't like the smell of this new scheme being hatched against him. But the girl in front of him let him in on the score. The question was, what did she want in return? 

Information wasn't free, even if he did like to think she had a soft spot for him.

“So,” he drawled, watching her watching him through sharp eyes, “you have some ulterior motive for bringing me this juicy morsel?” For once he didn’t mean her ass, well...a morsel and her ass.

“I’m returning your friendship in kind, nothing more and nothing less. Let me go along with her on this,” Nora’s lips thinned in eagerness. She leaned forward with arms on those equally wonderful thighs, “Station your bodyguard and a few guns at your storeroom and wait for me. Maybe from here to there I can talk her out of this. She has some rather strong misconceptions of you.”

“Who's to say she’s wrong?” He countered, feeling dark suddenly. There was no reason for anyone to make rumors of him. He was terrifying enough based on the true things he’d done. No one gain power without spillin’ some blood. No one got ahead without cutting deals and his penchant for violence only kept him sleeping well because he chose scumbags to dish it out on. Naw, he thought lowly, Bobbie probably had all the facts she needed. No need for lies.

Nora watched him carefully, seeming to sense his train of thought, “You’re a good man, Hancock.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew about all the shit my mind’s been puttin’ you through lately.” Didn’t make much sense in him admitting anything like that, but that was the chems and the booze and the dark mood Bobbie’s mention made of him.

She looked down, unable to look at him for long enough that he was pretty sure he’d made a right mess of a good thing, then, though, Nora surprised him.

“We all have thoughts like that Mayor Hancock, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t…” her cheeks went rosy like a pre-war portrait, “had some similar thoughts as well.”

She made it hard to think straight. Hard to remember what he really agreed to and harder still in other regions, but that was a given at this point. The whiskey bottle didn't move from his lap, even after he agreed with her hairbrained idea, shook her smooth hand and watched her go with a given smile. The last thing he wanted her to see was his little buddy at full mast. If she knew how hard his dick had gotten when she grasped his hand she’d think twice about her ‘good man’ judgment. For fucks sake, he wanted to throw her over his lap and spank her sweet ass until she was weeping...

“See you soon, Hancock.”

“We’ll see about that,” he managed, his neck straining to catch a final look at her backside as she left his office, his latch clicking closed.

John could hear her muffled goodbye to Harvey outside and the man’s unsteady reply. It might have been obvious, but John wondered if Harvey knew to lay off of her. She wasn’t a woman anyone could or should claim, but John didn’t want him to get the idea that he could just go for the kill. 

This thing with Bobbie had him partly annoyed, but Nora got him stiff as a week old corpse and his fingers were wringing the neck of the whiskey bottle, wanting to pull his cock out and get to work. Fuckin’ Bobbie and her fanciful justice. He aint’ done nothing no other Mayor would have done - done better than his brother ever could. Yet that hag had it in for him and no one was gonna stop her without violence ‘sides Nora.

Nora…secretly thinking dirty thoughts of her own...

-and just like that, he forgot about the whats-her-name trying to swindle him, recalled Nora’s luscious backside and felt the tension in his shoulders melt.

John only managed to keep himself quiet with a jet shooter clamped between his teeth and the whole thing being over in a matter of seconds. It felt just as good as the chems did. And he was proud to say he’d gotten better at the clean up as well. He cleaned his palm off on a dirty shirt, making a disgusted noise at the feel of his own cum; slippery and generous. How anyone wanted to fool around with him when his jizz was so irradiated and thick was beyond him. Guess it explained why the offers had been few and...less than eventful.

Though, he’d not say no if Nora wanted to give him a spin. Might have to demote himself to a feral if he ever snubbed out that juicy opportunity. 

Once the haze of his orgasm cleared he was left boneless from the residue of chems. He felt like a pile of goo-ified flesh soaking into his couch. Pure, fucking, bliss. Better than he figured someone like him deserved to feel.

“Well...fuck me sideways,” he managed, knowing just then what he needed. He needed to work for his fix in life. Hancock wanted the feel of grit in his eyes, of pain in his knees and his shotgun in his hands again. The open road, with all its curses and blessings. This is what happened when people in power got comfortable, they got greedy and lazy. Now he was sitting here, in a daze with his cum drying up in a dirty shirt and his ticket outta here doing what he was supposed to do. If anyone should have taken care of Bobbie it was him. Might be if he was a better man there wouldn’t even be a Bobbie situation. 

John shifted, feeling the indent of his couch and closed his eyes. Better savor it while he can, cause soon as that woman gets back he was outta here. He knew what his ticket out was and it was wrapped in tight blue spandex and had an ass that could murder any pussy chasin’ man.

Life had gotten a bit too comfortable. Boring was another word for it and Nora was the cure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yet some more has invaded the internet. Like I said I have a lot of this that's been gathering dust. It just needs me to comb through it all and find as many corrections as possible. I hope you all enjoyed this little update. More to come.


	4. Chapter 4

It was hard to tell if she was doing this based off of her own moral code, or if she was using Hancock’s proud visage as an instigator when her ankles started to ache and her brain demanded she headed back. The stink of rotten fish from the blown Mirelurk carcasses didn’t help. Bobbie’s demands and hard, unforgiving eyes also got her goad more than once or twice between the first cave in and now. They were in the old subway systems below the Commons and the place smelt worse than before the bombs, a feat Nora hadn’t realized possible until now.

She wasn’t dumb - her memories not too faded and fear-addled to remember all the times she had sat on the benches down here, waiting for the next train with one of her old textbook in her lap. This was no more Fenway Park, now Diamond City than it was a pond in the Glowing Sea. 

Nora hated the itch along the back of her neck every time she got a Feral between the eyes as if she ought to look behind - as if she’d find a smirking Hancock leaning up against the wall, sliding his eyes off her backside to give her a slow, lazy wink. The way he licked the end of his cigarette in the Third Rail that first night still haunted her sometimes...now included it would seem.

They paused inside a small, concrete room - the old bones of some long dead soul dusting a sleeping bag in the corner.

“Better be ready, this is the end of the line,” Bobbie said, nearly salivating - thinking herself a real swindler. Nora rolled her eyes, hidden as she was under the canvas and the pitch goggles. Say what you will about those that kept their faces hidden, Nora thought, it worked well for her so far.

She lifted the sack cloth long enough to throw another mentat under her tongue, swilling down a gritty bottle of water until her sweat finally tasted salty again.

“You sure this is the spot, Diamond City’s gotta be a little north-”

“I’m sure,” Bobbie snapped, hands on her hips. That perfectly coiffed hair of hers was sticky, loose hairs and dust making it look grey and old. Nora enjoyed the brief flash of nervous energy across the ghouls shoulders. None of her mild suggestions had worked on the old woman. Though there was only so much fear Diamond City security could put in someone. It seemed that the only one Bobbie feared was Hancock, and Nora wasn’t dumb enough to know that if she mentioned their true target in front of the uninformed Mel she’d have a gun in her face quicker than she could finish her sentence.

It wasn’t a hard stretch since whenever Bobbie sprang another lie to Mel, Nora got a nasty glare as well as if daring her to contradict the statement. The real rub would prove itself later, Nora reassured herself when the pain in her legs and shoulders made her angry - when all she wanted to do was snap and shove an elbow in Bobbie’s face despite the mentats she’d been eating all night.

“You ready?” Bobbie asked her, words smooth as hellish. Mel looked over at her as if he could see through the tint of the goggles. Nora shrugged and slung her assault rifle over her shoulder, nestling the strap against her sternum. They blasted through the debris, found another open, crumbling foundation and hightailed it out back near the subway as Sonya blasted the last bit away.

The sound crunched her skull, vibrating her from her toes to her ears and somewhere through the plume of dust and rock she got struck in the side. Pain shot up her throat, clutching at her ribs as the wind was knocked out of her. Somewhere, in the murky haze of grey Bobbie found her, shoved her in the shoulder mercilessly and yelled at her to get moving. Move she did, despite the pain. Fuck it, she thought with a nasty grimace.

It was a good thing Hancock wasn’t here because she was starting to feel like a fool for doing this.

Bobbie, it would seem, refused to be reasoned with even with a 10mm pointed in her face.

“Don’t you get it Bobbie?!” she hissed, “I’m going to blow your fucking head off or she’s going to do it.” 

Fahrenheit smirked over the railing, wringing the wrought iron like a junkyard dog ready for the leash to go slack. Desperately, unwilling to admit that she’d been wrong - that her plan had been pointless and perhaps she should have just let Hancock toss Bobbie over the wall, Nora tried again “Please, don’t think for a second that you’re going to just walk in there and steal it all. Just walk away…”

Fahrenheit growled from up high, “You do that and I’ll be sure to let him know you were the one who let her go.”

“I can live with that,” she decided aloud, looking down Bobbie and her calculating eyes from the muzzle of her pistol. Do it, Nora chanted to herself. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t make this end in a bullet…

“Fine, you win. I’m outta here.”

The elation almost made Nora giddy, throwing on a relieved smile that didn’t matter because the hood hid all that rubbish. Bobbie threw her supplies into the corner, sneered one last time and then slipped effortlessly out the back entrance. 

Above her, on the railing, Fahrenheit muttered something low to one of the hired Triggermen. The radiation suit nodded, following the path that Bobbie took. Nora’s eyes shifted. She wasn’t about to-

“Just making sure she gets her ass far away from here,” Fahrenheit assured her, looking less assuring than Nora would have liked. 

Mel was trying to collect the hazarded pieces of Sonya off the ground, mumbling apologies to the redhaired woman with a scoured look cast down at the both of them. Nora breathed deeply, wishing for the adrenaline to wear off now before she puked in front of everyone. But Mel took his time finding everything he could of his ruined eyebot before leaving, a Triggerman escorting him roughly out the doors. 

“You can count your blessings now, cause Hancock isn’t going to like this,” Fahrenheit told her, seeming to take some pleasure in that fact. Nora watched her light up a smoke as her legs finally gave out. She sank down on the tops of the stairs with an unbridled sound of exhaustion. One of the Triggermen just stood there, thumbing the discharge cap on his flamer. She could feel his eyes on her through the tinted panel of glass on his suit, but it went both ways as she watched him through her goggles.

“You can tell him yourself once Bernard gets his ass back here,” the woman’s hard voice told her. 

“I really hope I didn’t just go through all that for you to send that man out to shoot them down like feral dogs,” Nora could see Fahrenheit doing something like that. She didn’t know her well, but what she did know was she didn’t have patience for situations like these. Definitely, the type to settle a score with a gun rather than diplomatically. Then again, Nora wondered if that had been the right choice. She gazed down at the ruined floor, the carnage and thought that...it might have been pointless. Her body ached and she was sure that last cave in broke a bottom rib. Now that the adrenaline was wearing thin the pain was burning up with each of her breaths - pain starting to close in much of her senses.

“Do you,” she took a shaky breath, swallowing something that could very well have been blood, “a stim…?

Fahrenheit looked concerned for no more than a second, but it was long enough for Nora to realize she had some humanity despite her mask of detachment. The redhead nodded to the Triggerman behind her, “You,” she demanded, “down there. Grab a stimpack from the shelves for our hero of the hour. And be quick about it. I don’t need her adding blood to this mess.”

Nora suffered a smirk, leaning back on the railing. If she was going to wait she might as well get comfortable. If Fahrenheit was right then she’d be getting quite the tongue lashing from Hancock this evening - and maybe the ghoul was rubbing off on her, but a couple dirty images flittered against the backs of her eyelids at that idea. Based on what he could do with a melting mentat...or the tip of a cigarette…she was sure he’d be able to make a grown woman curl her toes under his attention.

She could see him now, arms crossed on his sofa with that sharp reflection of candle flames in his midnight eyes - glaring and demanding an explanation for why she did what she did. 

Her cheeks flushed under her hood. For fucks sake, she was sitting there with a busted rib and all she could think about was what Hancock might look like, teeth bared and angry at her. What was worse was the idea didn’t conjure up the usual feeling a friend's anger might incite. Instead, she felt her cheeks go hot and the flesh between her thighs tingle. 

Yes, she decided, he was rubbing off on her. 

The realization produced a hive of nervous energy under her skin all the way back to the stylish Mayor’s hometown. The journey was slow but uneventful. The great things about raiders it seemed was once they were cleared out they were reluctant to return. The dead, bloated bodies didn’t help matter, she surmised. If anything it was just a brainless bloatfly sucking from the bodies or a pack of scared hungry dogs that would rather protect the free meal than hunt for her.

Dogmeat sniffed around up ahead, tail wagging and jowls dripping red; quite happily she might add. She caught him muzzle deep in a rotting dolphin that washed ashore on the docks an hour ago. Nora wrinkled her nose at the idea she’d be the one that’d have to bathe him later. Could do for one herself - the stench of the underground permeated her nostrils. Rotten ghouls and mirelurk gunk held together by blasted concrete plaster. Wonderful deterrent, she figured, breathing in the cloying smell through the canvas of her hood.

It wasn’t until she was outside Goodneighbor that all those scratchy sensations she’d ignored came crawling back - the slow hot feeling between her legs and that jittery nausea in her throat. She stank, she was filthy and her body ached despite the stim...she didn’t paint the best picture, and now this...this strange attraction was rearing it’s ugly laughable head.

He was - Hancock was...it wasn’t that he was a ghoul. She supposed it had very little to do with one thing in particular, but a great many small things that all coalesced into a ‘no’ within her brain. Though, to be fair, her brain was a bad judge at times...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading, commenting and leaving kudos. Burning my way through this stuff pretty quickly. Please forgive any mistakes, I'm trying to catch them but some do slip through. Leave a comment if you have the time. It means a bundle. More on the way!


	5. Chapter 5

Nora looked at him with that hard expression one reserved for an oncoming assault - as if he had it in him to punish her in any way, or the right. Well, he took that back. He’d gladly bend her over and spank her sweet, plush ass silly. Though, John figured, she wasn’t expecting that, nor would she kneel to such a demand in the middle of the street - if she’d kneel for him at all.

She was standing with her shoulders back, like some Minuteman recruit, her hood, and goggles in her hands at her stomach, eyes searching his almost desperately.

The cold, stone at his back kept his head clear. Fahrenheit told him what happened early that day when the cavalry got back. That gleam in her eyes was almost more annoying than the idea that Nora would have let Bobbie leave with her life after the shit she pulled. Maybe it was a nasty joke, he’d thought. But Fee didn’t joke, so he got himself comfortable outside the State House with a pack of smokes and a case of ‘tats, waiting for her to come through the gates.

Her hooded head came through the gate about an hour later. The dog bounding at her heels; a mess of matted blood and panting spit - still high off a kill judging from the blood on its muzzle. Without that dog, Hancock would have felt worried about her traversing the ruins by herself, which a part of him felt bad about - the woman could clearly handle herself...but she let that hag go.

“Mayor Hancock,” she said, almost sounding apologetic. 

The line of her shoulders showed him that she was spooked despite the even posture it gave her. It wasn’t the reaction he wanted from her, but he was hard pressed to admit he wasn’t harboring some ill feelings for her choices at the moment. Maybe he could get away with spanking her - in his office, of course, sitting comfortably on his sofa with her thin suit slipped back over her thighs; soft, warm breasts resting against the side of his thigh, bouncing every time he gave her round cheek a hardy, pink slap.

“Nora,” he rasped, narrowing his eyes as the intoxicating scenario faded, “got word a certain thief is running around out there with both her hands.”

Her feet shifted, dried mud flaking off on the pavement. She didn’t confirm nor deny, but she didn’t need to, though he did note a streak of frustration across her face. 

“Guess you talked some sense into Bobbie then,” he made a lazy show of looking behind her, “shame I don’t see her around, begging for her old haunt back.”

“I just told her to run- I thought...well it doesn’t matter what I thought. It didn’t end how I planned,” she finally said, lips thin. “She won’t be back to bother you or Goodneighbor at the very least. You’ve got her spooked.”

“Oh,” he growled, “have I? Seems like if anyone’s spooked her it’d be you.”

She went as silent as the air preceding a radiation storm; cheeks tinged pink.

Wary, indeed, he thought, finally dragging his eyes off her to glower down at the dog sniffing around his legs, content to inhale all the stale stenches off his clothes. The lights of his town reflected like Christmas lights in the wet of her eyes. She was frustratingly patient, waiting for his reaction, despite how hard she tried to appear unconcerned. Knowing she wanted his approval, but too proud to act like it, made his cock harder than it should have - and there he went again, too pussy hungry for his own good.

Fahrenheit was right. He was in too deep now. Nora, on top of turning him into a lusty fool, was proving to him he was no better than a tyrant now. John thought himself better than that a few years ago. It had been a slow slide downhill and today would mark an end to it. Things seemed much clearer with her standing in front of him, and it wasn't just the mentats effect. It was hard to run away from the truth when it was stacked so finely in a blue, skintight vault suit like she was. 

“I gotta admit,” he started, ignoring the fizzle of his lit cigarette suffering against the breeze, “ain’t every day a beautiful lady gives me a lesson I should have taught myself awhile ago.”

He forced his mouth into a smirk when her lips parted, “World’s got enough tyrants as it is. Afraid I’m turning into one of ‘em. Few years ago I’d have itched to join a heist as well thought out as Bobbie’s...now I wanna sick the hounds on her and I don’t even know why. Like I’d miss the caps...”

“Well,” she shivered - he could see her fingers quivering at her thighs, “you wouldn’t be the first to become something you didn’t want, nor will you be the last.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t often a man realizes he’s become the very thing he stood up against. And I can’t have that. I need a break from this - it’s making me find the easy way out of things. Killin’ Bobbie would have felt good, but that don’t make it right. What you did...that was right.”

“Second chances,” she whispered, voice still a bit uneven, “Somehow I don’t feel so great about it.”

“That’s just the peer pressure talkin’. We don’t get many charity cases these days.”

Finally, Nora make a chuff of sound, like hard laughter before he leaned back and watched her turn with a wince to stuff her hood and goggles into her wrinkled pack. For a moment, he forgot about the mild strain in his pants as her flustered, sweaty face pinched. John could see a small, brownish purple stain on her side - old blood. She looked exhausted; strain under her eyes, a small gash in the corner of her lip and eyes that stared at him, unfocused.

“I was worried you were gonna give me a lashing, to be honest,” she added, running her fingers through the damp strands of her hair before blowing out a hot breath.

“Not the kind you might have expected,” he teased, showing her his teeth in a grin fit for a deathclaw, his eyes still on her side.

Nora wrinkled her nose at his reply, but the quiet chuckle and the fresh red in her cheeks made his gut clench and unclench. This woman made his nerves ache - made the normal lax state of his shoulders bunch up like he was waiting for a clap of thunder. Any deeper and one might say he liked this girl for more than her sparklin’ ass and smile - which he did, very much.

“You need me to help you to the Doc?” he asked, low and serious.

Nora paused, fingers in a knot of hair, looking uneasy. Eventually, she shook her head, giving him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “Fahrenheit gave me a stim before I left your warehouse. I’m fine, truly.” 

A lie, he thought, but who was he to play mother hen?

Instead of playing into his concern, he asked her out for some drinks.

It made sense that she’d join him. He was buying after all. What didn’t make sense was that when he offered his arm in mock seduction, she took it honestly, blowing a few sweaty strands out of her face with an obvious air of relief. She didn’t want him angry at her, maybe to her, it was just a smart move tactically. His town could offer her sanctuary and help when needed...but John liked thinking she cherished his personal opinion of her more than any logical benefits.

Her body leaned towards him, closer and looser with each hour until he was slumped with her on the moldy couch in the back room with nothing but the candles illuminating the space. She was grinning raggedly with her elbow resting drunkenly on his shoulder - her breath drenching the side of his face in a warm, moist haze of scotch. Even past the alcohol, sweat and dry smell of plaster, she made his mouth water.

He wasn't blind to the subtle way she’d slipped some mentats in her mouth between drinks either, making her move like liquid; never not smiling at him. She even let him flick the zipper on her suit when she complained of feeling hot - boiling - and laughed at him as she gave him a view of the tops of her breasts.

She glistened with sweat.

“Gonna give me a damn heart attack, peaches,” he breathed, drunk and easy and tongue as loose as a dehydrated dogs.

“That reminds me,” he slurred, tapping the ball of her knee with his thumb, “Where’s that dog of yours?”

Her damp skin caught the orange light off of the candles, and as she spoke her chest swayed; made all the more pronounced by the lightning. More spank material for later, he thought, as he eyed the fine crease of delicious flesh.

“-feeding him scraps, I’m sure.” 

It was hard to take all of her in, but he had to admit - sitting here with a perfect view down her neckline - that her upper assets were just as sweet as her lower one.

“So, Mayor huh?” She asked, flicking the brim of his tricorn with a sloppy little smile that made his stomach clench hard, “How’d a rebel like you end up the tyrant? I heard a couple bawdy tales amongst all the nasty ones. Something must link those two men together.”

John hoped she hadn’t said anything too important about the pooch. She was still smiling, so it wasn’t like it was dead in a ditch anywhere. Momentary lapse in cognitive functions, he accepted, but that wasn’t to be blamed on the chems alone with the way she looked. He pulled in a breath of smoke and grinned, “Little of this….little of that - and a lot of blood,” he told her, teeth around his cigarette and fingers somehow still on her knee. When had her leg draped over his lap? Did he pull it over him, or was that an act of her own volition? Too much jet and mentats were makin’ his mind a scattered heap of detailed moments, mingled with foggy links to each of them. Maybe he ought to lay off for the night after this last shooter...

“Bobbie told me quite a bunch of unsavory ‘facts’,” her smile wavered - a little crease forming between her brows

“The terrible thing is,” her lips thinned, suddenly looking much less drunk than he thought she was, “I didn’t mind them, even if they were just a bunch of bullshit. I wondered, on my way back here, if that made me a terrible person. Why would the idea of sitting next to a man like that appeal to me so much?”

Hancock paused, realizing he might have been too high for this serious turn in conversation. He also realized she might have been too ‘tatted up for her own good.

“Guess that all depends on what were the lies and what were the truths,” he managed, swallowing a batch of spit his mouth created sometime between her palm resting on his shoulder and her other leg stretching to lay over his lap. With the chems in his system, he assured himself she couldn’t feel his erection under the backs of her knees, but there was a little rational part of his brain that told him he was an idiot for thinkin’ that. Either way, he was usually pretty keen on picking up hints - with her? - he wasn’t so sure of himself…

“If only half of them were true, you’re wasted on that couch in your office, getting soft on chems and booze. The Commonwealth could use a man like you.”

“Ghoul,” he corrected, feeling at once giddy like a good pyscho high and sick like a bad batch of jet, “and where did the guarded girl who was here a moment ago? Hmm, she got ballsy.”

Pink; her tongue was incredibly pink when it traced her lips before they stretched into a wide, high-looking smile. 

“Like you being immortal matters in the grand scheme of things,” she told him, fingers curling in the worn frills at his collar, the tip of her thumb accidently brushing the damaged skin on his neck. Fuck, he hoped this was leading where he thought it was.

When her body leaned in he was a bit embarrassed that he closed his eyes like some fuckin’ love sick teenager, only to find out she’d been reaching for the jet inhaler nestled between his thigh and the couch. Her eyes shimmered when he found them looking at him, lips smirking before they parted to accepted the jet, inhaling a modest gush of poison.

John watched her pupils blow wide, eyes going black and the red glow of a sweet high covering her cheeks. He wasn’t sure if he preferred this new creature she became with the addition of chems and alcohol, or if the guarded, cautious Nora was his cup of tea - but either way, he was hard as a fuckin’ steel beam. His right hand curled around her shoulder; fingers itching to weave into the hair at the back of her head, tug her down and smooth her wet lips over his dick until she opened up wide for him.

“Sleep on it, Mayor Hancock, let me know if you want to keep fleshing out that indent in your couch...or if you’d like to be free again. I’ll be here ‘till morning.”

She left him with a hardon for what felt like the thousandth time, and something else more potent than the lust curling in his belly. It wasn’t the chems either that he felt rushing through his veins. It was adrenaline...and it was the purest kind. Something you couldn’t replicate with chems or unfair knife fights. Life or death - that sweet rush of livin’ like you could die the next minute. Real freedom.

Yeah, he thought, for once not focusing on the memory of how her ass moved when she left him for the night on this couch with this erection and an empty canister of jet...instead, he was thinkin’ about how short life was, how short it ought to be. Who wanted to live forever if forever meant the same shit on different days. Nora might not grant him immortality like he granted himself, but - fuck - it’d be a hell of a way to live out the rest of his days. And he’d been waitin’ for her to take the bait all night. Let it be her idea, he thought, counting down the hours. Let her ask him...and boy did she.

He didn’t have to sleep on the decision, but - he smirked - Nora probably knew that anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thanks for reading, commenting and leaving kudos. Means a lot to me. More on the way!


	6. Chapter 6

He caught the glint of early sun off her goggles the next morning, leaning against the back wall of one of his storerooms while he gave his farewell speech to his fellow people. Even hidden under the mask he could tell she was hurtin’ from last night, but her suit looked clean, washed and that soft hair around her shoulders shined with fresh wetness. That knowing tilt of her hips, arms loosely crossed under her chest gave him only the slightest pause in his goodbye.

A few souls seemed crestfallen, upset that their generous Mayor would be departing for an unforeseeable amount of time. Fahrenheit at his side kept stoic as one chem-sick Meg made it audible how much they disagreed with putting his loyal bodyguard in charge during his absence. That was easy to silence, though. His longtime patrons of Goodneighbor accepted his decision, even if they were reluctant to cheer it. 

John wrung his hands on the railing as everyone cleared out; unbridled energy running through his veins like one perfect hit of psycho. He cut his eyes over to Nora and found her spot on the wall vacant.

“If you’re serious about this, I’d tuck tail and run sooner than later,” Fahrenheit muttered behind him. 

That look she gave him could cause the balls to shrivel up and fall off of any other man but John. If that was a gift or a curse he could never figure, but with a flick of his thumb, he lit up a smoke and gave her a shitty grin, exhaling a thick plume of smoke from his nostrils, “I don’t have to tell you how much I like taking my sweet ass time.”

She scoffed, curled her upper lip but didn’t say another word as she followed him into his office, where his stuff was already packed and ready for him. He had a moment of panic where his mind assaulted him with the chance that Nora could have left without him, just despite him, but the sight that greeted him when his office door opened confirmed his future.

Bent over, was the luscious ass of Nora, who was currently checking over the contents of her own luggage. She was sporting a new leather holster that seemed made to pronounce the delicious bottom curve of her right ass cheek. The strap of leather looked too tight. Might be she needed someone to loosen it for her. John watched her knee snap straight, pushing her ‘asset’ out further for him. Keep it up, he thought, eyes drifting over the slope of her thighs and back up over the hard curve of her hips, he might just crack like most Diamond City scum expected him to.

“Thought I'd missed my golden opportunity,” he rasped, watching her behind clench slightly in surprise before she stood up and twisted, looking for all intents and purposes, a little caught off guard. As though she hadn't heard him walk into his own office, he thought, leaning his weight down on the squeaky floorboards. 

Her throat worked subtly, swallowing before she admitted, “Just wanted to make sure I didn’t have a fever dream over last night's decision, then I figured...why not wait for the man of the hour in his pad.” 

The slight tint to her cheeks said otherwise, but he had nothing to hide in his open pack beside her own. If she found some of his ‘items’ then so be it.

Hancock strolled over towards her, ignoring the venom that clouded the room from the woman behind him. Nora gave him a lopsided smile, shoulders rolled back, standing as tall as her frame would allow. He wasn’t a tall ghoul, never had been very imposing as a man either, but she was shorter than him and a dark part of him relished that more than it ought to. Alpha male syndrome, he thought, sharing a silent, knowing look Nora’s way. She rolled her eyes to the side wall, spying the shotgun primed and oiled on the pegs, mounted just under a radstag head. His weapon of choice - a thing he’d told her about in all its gory detail one afternoon when he caught her in Daisy’s during his monthly tax collection. She’d been running those slender fingers of hers over an assault rifle and he’d, naturally, regaled her with the many reasons why close up and personal were better than some long ranged, spray and pray weapon.

Hancock was pretty sure she bought the assault rifle just to spite him.

The gun itself hung over her shoulder as she eyed him; browns to black eyes. “I’ll meet you outside,” she whispered, brushing past him gently, warmly….fuckin’ hell. 

Just like that he finally realized he was gonna be stuck in the middle of the inhospitable Commonwealth with her, his gun and a fair amount of aimless time. John wondered if they’d start fucking once they got outside the ruins....or maybe just outside hearing range of his good people. Perhaps she’d press him up along the barricade, whisper how much she ached for him in the remnants of his ear and let him take all manner of desire out on her pliant body.

Much to his dismay, Hancock found out that she liked to take her time unless of course the teasing that night in the Third Rail was just a temptation to get him out of the safe confines of his town to act as another gun in her arsenal...what a shame that would be. Nora did not, in fact, jump his bones the first chance they got. The walls of Goodneighbor disappeared behind them, and then the Commons was but a memory. Everything passed by them, all those perfect spots at just the right height for him to lay her over and slide his cock down the line of her ass.

John realized thankfully before the shit hit the fan, that the state of his mind as it was wouldn’t keep him alive long. It was no question that the paths she took them along - him and the pooch - were cleared and well maintained that way. If this had been open terrain they were wading through, he’d have been a dead man long ago.

They passed the first night in an old comic book store, safe as could be. He had to sit in a back room with her while she flipped through comics on her stomach, in her skintight suit. The beautiful slope of her ass bouncing as she kicked her legs behind her. 

They ate, they shared some albeit forced jokes and John suffered the tension in the air like a damn pro until she fell asleep, curled up on a musty sleeping bag. Then, like the Silver Shroud himself, he snuck off into the manager's room with nary a sound so he could rub one out in a corner to the despicable thought of waking Nora up with his face buried between her cheeks, licking out her very soul. 

He had to admit, though, he hadn't had a more deeply slept sleep in his recent memory than the one on that first night. 

There’d been a week's worth of nights like that - tantalizing and tempting and with nowhere private enough to spill his load. It went without saying that he got used to the morning wood real quick.

It seemed like the months went by like weeks and then when he’d stopped keeping track of the nights where he went to bed with a hard cock and the mornings with an even harder cock, she dropped a hint so fuckin’ unsubtle that it went right over his head. Sure, Hancock wanted very little else but to bend her over and slide his cock within her, bruising her backside in the process, but the way she operated had him just as intrigued as her rear end did the first time he saw her. The old world she came from gripped him - the way she spoke of the founding fathers he only knew about from old placards - the way she liked to sketch him and random things when she’d take up his offer of different flavored mentats. She looked damn fine for being two hundred plus years old.

She was more than just a nice ass he knew and somewhere along the way John realized he’d be satisfied with what they had now. After such a short time that felt like a second and yet forever at once, he enjoyed just living off the land with her. He’d be alright with what they had going for them, for the rest of his days - but then she dropped that mother of hints on him just when he’d accepted his fate and all that shattered.

He’d been kicking back in Hangman’s Alley, top-level where the crafted wood flooring went flush with the brick buildings rooftop. It was the middle of the night and the settlers were livin’ large down on ground level, drinking and strumming guitars. The music was soothing enough that the tin of mentats on his thigh laid untouched until Nora’s head peeked at him over the ladder. The room below was her private space - a space they were both going to sleep in tonight and one where he dressed himself down earlier that evening.

“How’s my favorite costumed crusader fairing?” She asked; thin humor in her voice. John saw the smooth edges around her eyes and knew she was halfway through the effects of some mentats. She had grown to enjoy the sweet berry ‘tats he cooked up for her. 

“Favorite manly specimen you mean?” He countered, showing her his teeth in a show of wit. The way her eyelashes fluttered - long enough for him to see them in the dark from that distance made his toes tap rapidly in his boots. The soft, cool breeze fluttered the ruffles on his shirt, cooling through the thin cotton pleasantly. He’d lain his coat and hat on the bed she gave him before getting comfortable; casting off his traditional look for something a little less obvious.

Already she was puttin’ him on edge and he hadn’t even seen what she was wearing at that point. 

When she smirked, crawled up on the floor with a bottle of booze and nothing more than a threadbare tank top and some panties he almost lost the delicate balance his boots had on the empty paint can. No doubt she knew the look on his face, and damn her, but she knew what her ass did to him. She’d caught him studying it like it was some ancient artifact many a time. But that night…?

Why hadn’t he taken the hint? Why hadn’t he kicked that paint can down into oblivion and mounted her like a fuckin’ animal when she bent over on her knees to light one of the candles on the fence posts? Because he was high - no, no he’d not been high that night. Scared, maybe? Nervous.

Intimidated…for sure, he figured.

She’d even started talking about the old in and out when the obvious noises of some couples knockin’ boots carried over on the wind to their haunt. John swore he could see gyrating bodies through the slats in the wall of the hut down by the gate...

“I guess it's been awhile...long before your great great grandfather was born probably,” she’d admitted with a thick swallow of liquor, “Can’t say I missed it much. What about you?”

“Before this.” He’d gestured to his mug, grinning, telling himself to keep it cool - to pretend she wasn’t wearing a little thin scrap of material around the thing that brought him on this bird-brained adventure; totin’ guns and righting wrongs. That damn backside. He’d spent the evening alarmingly hard while deflecting every turn of the conversation that lead his thoughts astray. Only so much a man, or ghoul, with a functioning cock and set of balls could take. 

“No lie,” he assured her, pinching his tongue between his teeth, “My sex drive vanished with the nose.”

“You're a terrible fibber,” she told him, only looking mildly offended at the supposed lie. Another one that thought him a tail chaser - that always flattered him, but from her he wasn't so sure he liked the assumption.

“I never really fucked all that much when I was married I suppose, but I do miss it sometimes. Sometimes,” she had exhaled before leaning back, curling her fingers in the hem of her shirt and sliding her inner thighs together, “it felt good...sometimes I would forget about the world even then when it wasn’t falling apart. Now it’s just alcohol and sleep that blocks it all out.”

“And chems,” he added, noting the glazed way her eyes reflected the bright moon hanging low behind him. 

“I'd have died of the panic a long time ago if not for them,” she’d admitted then, somber. John figured he’d said something witty about that, but he couldn’t recall her laughing. Just remembered the booze and the hazy state of inebriation and arousal he was in before the darkness came and he’d woken up alone, back sore from sleeping in that unforgiving chair.

Sitting in that chair, with the sun only just about to peak over the horizon and not a soul in sight, he slid his aching cock out from the folds of his pants and stroked a nice, welcome orgasm out of himself. Reckless it was, he realized as he cleaned himself off. Anyone could have popped their heads up over the floor boards and seen him with his dick in his hand...

It was only later when he saw Nora dressed and ready to head off the next supply line that he realized what a damned idiot he’d been. In fact, he was about to call it a real convincing dream, but she gave him a low, flushed look and it all came to rest in his gut like a sack of bricks. Fuckin’ moron, indeed.

“Hope your head doesn’t hurt from all that scotch I poured down your throat last night.”

John managed a low choking laugh, “Take more than that to put me on my back.”

Nora licked her lips, “Noted.”

And he may have died right then and there had his blood not started pumping extra fast at the way her eyes skirted down his frame - as if she saw something no one else did in the wiry, burnt length of him.

He managed somehow to keep his head on while they trudged down through the alcoves of the city, shotgun at the ready as he followed close behind. The brick from the buildings at their backs was playing hell on his ensemble, but it was a small price to pay for the strategic pacing and cover. A little pit stop, manned by a father and his daughter allowed them to wait out a passing radstorm with little issue. Except Nora took the break as an excuse to chat up the red-haired girl, leaving him sitting in a corner booth with the curiously talkative father.

They always assumed he was old, just because he was a ghoul.

“Naw,” he breathed, accepting a rolled cigarette from the middle-aged man. Hancock lit the smoke with a sly grin when the man arched a furry brow, “I ain’t much older than you. Stopped counting after ten years in, but it can’t have been more than thirteen since...or twelve.”

“Young one then, eh?” The man muttered, mainly to himself. He introduced himself as Robert after pouring them both some shots. Nora and the daughter were at the other end of the diner - his curvaceous companion sat up on the table, legs crossed with a dismantled radio in her lap. The daughter, Abigail, was laughing softly, providing the tool when needed and light, muffled conversation. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, and every now and then John caught her looking over at him under those long lashes, the barest of dangerous smiles on her lips.

“Hey,” Hancock chuckled, “at least I’ll look this good when I really do turn into a corpse, right? Can’t say I regret it.”

“Immortality? There are worse curses I suppose,” Robert replied, dragging his black nail through the scruff of hair on his jaw. They sat and drank, and when the radstorm turned into dark gray rain, thunder and lightning they were invited to stay the evening, provided they help with dinner. 

Nora settled up next to him as he bit into a smoke, pulling down the clanky metal rafters on the busted windows. The loud sound drowned out the soft step of her approaching feet. In the haze of tobacco smoke, she appeared, smiling. Gentle tunes erupted from the back of the diner. That girl of Roberts and her had fixed the radio then…

“I hope you’ve got your wits about you, John,” her voice was like a fuckin’ purr, “cause we’ll be bunking together tonight. It’s cold and crowded and you’re probably going to end up as my space heater.”

“You usin’ me for my body already, huh?”

The mentats were talking already, “Surprised it’s taken me so long?”

Hancock felt the seam in his pants cut into the sensitive skin of his stiffening cock already, “I got no complaints, just don’t take advantage of me without a fair warnin’. Wouldn’t want to spook the good people of the Commonwealth.”

It was all in good humor - just a bit of that ol’ banter he was so comfortable with, but Nora...if last night was anything to go by, didn’t play by the rules he’d come to expect. He sucked in a ragged breath, all too telling, as she leaned in next to him, elbows on the counter. Her eyes widened, looking up through the broken slat in the steel shutters, out at the stormy parking lot. 

“I’m sure it’s nothing they haven’t seen before,” she mouthed, soft and nonchalant. If she meant a beautiful woman like herself fucking around with a waifish ghoul like himself, then...it wasn’t common enough for sensible folk to not be alarmed.

John snorted, sucked in a hard breath of smoke and tried his best to get a whiff of her while she was near enough. Flowers, that’s what she smelt like. How in the torn, bloody world did she manage to smell like that? Something wild and fragrant invaded his senses as she shifted, cupping her elbows. Her hot, sweet breath ghosted by his fingers resting on the counter, “I can be quiet…if I need to be.”

Well, if he hadn’t been hard before he was now. Painfully, he admitted, wincing as an onslaught of depraved, juicy thoughts raced through his head - of turning her over in their sleeping roll, soft ass pressed into his groin...dragging the zipper down on her suit...

“Damn, sister…” he rasped, feeling like someone clawed the breath outta him.

What a colossal tease, he thought. She left him with a soft sound, maybe a laugh or a giggle if he dared. ‘Deserved it,’ she might have whispered. 

While everyone else joked and laughed while preparing dinner he was stuck trying to find the best position to hide the bulge between his legs - a problem he was finding very hard to resolve with Robert looking at him the way he did. Assessing…maybe a bit suspicious despite their friendly conversation earlier.

Don’t worry old man, he thought, it isn’t your daughter I’m hard for…

The focus of his desire kept flicking her eyes over towards him, expression unreadable most times and the times he could read ‘em? Well - that made him equal parts nervous and excited. Which was a combination of feelings he hadn’t experience in a few decades or more.

John sat back on a stool, shaving the edges of a gourd for the stew they had steaming on the counter, thinking back to a time when he was a young boy, realizing that his friendship with little Emily Vermont had taken a dirty turn. Those conflicting emotions back then were similar to now. After his first fuck, he forgot about the nervous itch that preceded it...

Nora made him feel like a little kid again, about to become a man - and for someone with as much experience as him, was a daunting realization indeed. 

They all ate to the sound of that nervous kid stumbling over his words on the radio, playing songs he’d heard a thousand times over. Aside from the fuzzy, mechanical tunes, it was quiet. Robert and he traded old stories from the old days while Nora listened quietly, even if her stories were the oldest. The girl made faces outside her father’s view, letting them all know she’d heard these stories about as many times as John had heard Atom Bomb Baby.

Robert seemed to relish the company of another man, even if that man was a ghoul it seemed. The man kept John up with aimless conversation, bad jokes, and a few more adult tales once his daughter crawled up under one of the far back tables, a makeshift bed underneath. Nora was sleeping in the booth beside him, head in her arms, making light sounds of sleep. Her unfinished drink was held loosely in her hand and somewhere into Robert's story about how he met his deceased wife, John had taken her whiskey for himself. There was a flavor on the rim that wasn’t the booze, and Hancock felt himself shudder thinking it was the taste of her lips and tongue.

“You lose a wife or a girlfriend?”

John shook his head, swallowing the bite of the whiskey, “I was never a stick-around sorta guy in my time. Love ‘em and leave ‘em… as my Pa would say.”

“Can’t fault you there. Sometimes losing them makes you wish you never met ‘em…”

John wasn’t sure what to say to that. The silence didn’t urge him to speak so he didn’t. Robert kept pouring the shots and while he loved the bite of liquor, and the buzz, it took more than the man had in stock to get him as fucked as it seemed Robert was intent on getting. He had the flush of drunkenness and the slow, uneven blink that came with it. Hancock thought about Nora, itching his uneven chin thoughtfully while he studied her out the corner of his eye.

She was as close as he’d ever gotten to the love like Robert had for his dead wife - if one could call his obsession such a thing. Sometimes his cocks desire was overshadowed by her laughter - the way it made him feel when she trusted him enough to cover her when she was vulnerable. Trust, her trust, sometimes made his stomach warm. A friend, he was sure. Something more? Maybe.

She had a body out of those magazines, and that ass was his first mission foremost when he first met her. The temptation of sex had his body flutterin’ like a good high did, but...hell…

“She’s pretty,” Robert slurred suddenly, pulling John’s attention away from the puff of Nora’s lips as she slept. He must have started starin’ at her. 

Robert continued, watching Nora sleeping, “Not often you see women traveling with someone like you,” he paused, then frowned, “No offense…”

“None taken,” John offered.

“You two…” Robert tried, arching a bushy brow, failing at the words that should have come easy given what Hancock had heard spill out of his mouth when the liquor started flowing more heavily. The man made a gesture with his fingers as if trying to pluck the words from thin air, mouth opening and then closing. The wrinkle of age around his eyes deepened.

“Heh, with a mug like mine I’m lucky she keeps me around at all.”

Robert chuffed with ill humor, “I’ve met uglier men than you, and they ain’t got a rad condition to blame it on either.”

“Guess I’m lucky I was born with impeccable bone structure, huh?” John grinned, then grinned wider when Robert laughed silently, nodding his head before tipping back another shot of brown liquor. John itched to ask him the story with his daughter - how they etched themselves a hole here without much trouble. It wasn’t as dangerous here at it had been a year ago, but the odd raider patrol wasn’t unheard of. 

“Rads can’t take that away from ya’.”

“They tried…” he admitted, touching the hard shell of a mentats case, hidden in his front pocket. No chems, Nora had muttered to him earlier that evening. ‘The girl’s on the better end of a jet withdrawal.’

Good for her that she'd already taken her daily dose before the news...

John could respect going cold turkey, but he wasn’t below popping a few ‘tats once they all went to bed. That time came later in the night. The storm was still hammering the tin roof of the diner by the time he nudged Nora awake, helping her with a clamp of fingers around her arm to the corner of bedrolls they’d rolled out before dinner. Close, he thought then and now. They might as well have slept on top of each other.

She barely made it to the roll, falling on her knees with a grumble just before collapsing on the padding. A soft, pleased sound left her with an exhale and John smirked before crunching a few bitter mentats as he got himself comfortable beside her.

Figured she'd do something like tease his blood to boil only to konk out like a little girl halfway through the night. 

Could have been worse, John knew. He was almost thankful she wasn't awake, looking at him with expectation in the heavy darkness. He could and did dream, but what would he actually do if he got his hands on her?

Pray for all the stamina in the damned Commonwealth, maybe. 

It was always easy to sleep with rain. The sound like static on the radio. And somewhere between a chem-induced sleep and wakefulness he felt the warm weight of his girl’s arm over his stomach. Her nose pushed into the side of his shoulder and then...a moment later, a thigh stretched out to hook his leg in, pulling him close against the heat of her.

“Sweet dreams, sister,” he whispered, hearing her steady breathing despite the fucking downpour.

It was still raining in the morning, but the droplets were gentle, almost clear as he slumped in the doorway, cupping the rain in his palm. Almost drinkable, he thought, watching the rain slide between his fingers as the crisp intoxication of tobacco slithered out his nose. Behind him, he could hear Nora, voice grateful and reassuring as she rebuffed the suggestion that they stay until the rain stopped. They had places to go and things to see he mouthed as she spoke them behind his shoulder. Might be he knew her too well by now. He knew her better than he knew most, he figured. More thoroughly than anyone else.

Last night he’d been so tired. The chems always put him to sleep when he wanted them too, but last night, he couldn’t sleep. The soft comfort of her limbs over him felt too good to sleep through. Nora would shift, her knee sliding over the top of his thigh. Or her nose would twitch, teasing him through the thin material of his coat sleeve. The continuous heat and breath she emitted heightened the high of the mentats.

Hancock shifted, feeling the start of his belated morning wood. It had just gone soft a few minutes ago and already he was lettin’ seedy thoughts rush in with the - tame by his standards - events of last night. 

Nah, there was nothing tame about the throbbing heat of her sweet little snatch pressed into his leg…

“I’ve shaken them,” her tired voice said from beside him. The smoke in his lungs threatened to choke him as he inhaled hard - startled.

“Thought you weren’t ‘spose to shake babies,” John grinned, gesturing to the girl helping her father count the supplies Nora left for them. She was always doing that, sparring what little they had for others when they needed it. The true messiah of the Commonwealth.

A bright smile split Nora’s face - the fine, barely-there lines under her eyes creased in pleasure, no traces of that latent anxiety this morning, “I’m pretty sure she’ll gut you if you shake ‘er. That one's a spitfire. They breed them tough out here.”

“Hey, now. Don’t sell yourself short, sweetheart,” he wagged his brows at her cheekily, “From where I’m standin’ it looks like they bred ‘em pretty good back then too.”

“Ever the charmer I see.”

He shrugged, feigning innocence that he had jack shit of. “What can I say? You make a man wanna spill his guts.”

“Keep it up and figuratively will turn into literally,” a warning from anyone else, but an all-in-good-fun jab from her. They chuckled briefly and just like that they both braced the slight trickle of rain ever onward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for readin', commentin' and leavin' kudos. Please forgive any mistakes I might have missed, it's just little ol' me trying to catch the errors. More on the way.


	7. Chapter 7

They hadn’t been too far gone from The Slog when the match sparked, fizzled and burned. The sweet and vaguely bitter aroma of hubflowers were sending relaxing shivers down her spine when the sound deafened her - so clapping and abrupt. Like thunder without the rain, she thought.

Despite the ringing in her ears she’d heard Hancock grunt, curse and fall to his knees. A bullet, her mind reeled. A bullet, but no pain. She’d not been hit. Hancock - Nora turned hard, her spine popping to find him, looking puzzled and pained and bleeding freshly.

It was just the shoulder, she’d reassured herself as her fingers snatched at his coat lapels, taking them both into the brush. She dragged him across the pathway of dead leaves, over a cut of rock in the earth - all that beautiful adrenaline making his weight feel like not but a satchel of cloth. They tumbled over the short cliff, hitting a pool of dried debris with a hot gasp. 

“This bullet better kill me, cause I’m-”

“Shh!” she hissed, cupping his mouth; moist with pain. Her heart hammered faster than she thought it physically could. Hancock bristled, groaned in what seemed more like annoyance than any sort of pain and thankfully went silent. He was laid out half above her, forehead pressed painfully into her breast - the base of his hat brushed her lips and when she slid her tongue out to wet them she tasted leather and age and something salty.

Nora felt her stomach flip. Fuck this, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut as sweat started gathering there. 

“Hancock,” she whispered, removing her hand from his panting mouth, “Lay back. I got this…”

“Peaches…” he tried - damn him but she could hear the start of an argument so she brushed him onto his back, a palm on his chest to keep him there. A flicker of something raw pooled within the black; gazing up at her. She couldn’t be sure if it was concern or helplessness...or just pain. The shoulder was a bitch to get hit in. She’d only ever taken one bullet, but it had been in the leg...and all she got out of the merchant that had stopped to help her was a solemn ‘least you didn’t get it in the shoulder.’ It had the lovely combination of bleeding freely, easily infected, limiting any modes of fighting back and the pain...the pain was supposed to be excruciating.

Nora cast a glance at Hancock once more; just a fleeting look and found him breathing hard out his open nose, watching her hotly.

“Just stay here,” she told him, soft and half-begging.

Where there were raiders there were many, and there were raiders... 

Like radroaches there were never just one. By her count, there had been four. All of them starved and crazed with their skins a cluster of boils and chem sores. Desperate - that’s what they were but it made them easy to pick off. Her cola bottle scope provided a sharp look through the golden shrubbery, and the feral way they were scouring the grounds for her and Hancock made pulling the trigger less of a guilt trip than it normally was. One fell in a comical spray of blood from a bullet to the temple. When two more came to assess the curious damage of their ‘friend’ she sprayed them with a dozen or so shots, all across the chest. The last one tripped over one of them in the gory pile and broke her neck…

She slid back down the short cliff, cool clay dirt darkening her suit, calming down her fever - of which the panic and adrenaline had to have been the culprit of. 

“Hey…” Hancock muttered, throwing himself up into a sitting position; obsidian eyes cloudy.

“Hey,” she forced a smile, running a quick palm under his chin, across his cheek, pulling his attention back into the now. The pain, she thought again, wincing for him. He gazed at her, through the hurt and the fog and with a breath she plucked the frag grenade off the loop inside his coat pocket, bit the ring and let it go soaring over her head to the bloody battlefield above. She cupped the mangled mess of his ears, stuffed her face in his neck and braced herself for the rip of sound.

It wasn’t until she had him up against the cold clay wall that they both realized the bullet was still inside him.

“We’ll have to go back,” she said, more to herself than to him, though he replied anyway.

“Well...guess you’ll have to fend off your raw sexual attraction one more day...sparring Wiseman the sorry sight of course,” it was said as a joke, but the sawtooth sound of his voice made it sound much more bitter than it ought to be. Nora frowned, peeled back his coat lapel again and grimaced. Through the ruined fabric it was hard to make out the extent of the damage, but the whole left side of his torso from the shoulder down was drench red. A black, little-mangled hole seeped all that blood. 

“I think you should just keep quiet for now, Hancock. Not that I don’t love your witty humor but...this doesn’t look good.”

“Hmph, it’s not the first time I’ve been shot.”

“As I figured,” she rolled out with ill humor, slipping an arm under his good shoulder, “come on - up you go!”

The Slog welcomed them with a smile that quickly fell away. Wiseman took up the weight of Hancock’s other side immediately, even through his oddly grumpy assurance that he was fine. It made her nervous - the stiff way her normally charming and laid back companion was snapping at anyone else that tried to help. Not like him at all…

They all vacated the living space at the center of the building as soon as Hancock detached himself from them, inelegantly sliding down to the floor, back against the sofa with a loud, echoing grunt. Nora knelt down beside him, hands hovering while his eyes closed, breath coming in ragged and fast. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen…

“Nora,” a rasp. 

She turned to find Wiseman behind her. He offered her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes before laying a yellow box on the coffee table. A chem box? Her eyes narrowed immediately and Wiseman saw, quickly adding, “only thing we had that was sterile. Got you tools for what you need as well as the pain. Alcohol too.”

“...thank you,” she told him and meant it, even if her tone couldn’t express it.

Once the double doors closed she turned to Hancock, mouth set.

“Wha-what do I do?” It was a dumb question, she was doing what she needed to do. 

The first thing was limiting the pain. Hancock breathing gradually became calm after some med-x, if not a bit too sluggish for her liking while the blood started to clot. The stench of copper and expunged gunfire filtered up from the folds of his coat as she carefully removed it; his soft grunts of pain like little cuts in her lungs. 

“You got it, sister,” he rasped, pawing at the floorboards by his side for the crumpled pack of smokes she’d seen him shaking pitifully out of his bag. 

Nora grit her teeth, curbing her tongue. If he wants a smoke after getting a slug in his shoulder then let him have one. If anyone deserved a cigarette it'd be him right now - though she did worry that the combination of smells would leave her puking while he still had a bullet inside him.

She got it though, he was right.

The bullet slipped out against her wet tweezers, plunking to the floor loud enough that she jerked, letting go a hard exhale and a ruddy, moist curse. The tickle of sweat slid down her face, puddling along her chin before dripping down over her heaving chest. That grand old terror was draining out her limbs, making her severely nauseated despite the relief that followed.

“I got it…” She said after a minute at least, moving her sticky fingers to the golden buttons of his vest.

“Didn't think this is how you'd get me out of my clothes,” his voice was a growl of old pain and exhaustion, but Nora wasn't surprised to find him grinning sloppily at her. Chems were a convenient invention indeed and she was sure he was riding out the high as best he could. His sly ways should have eased her mind, but instead, she nearly tore the threads on the last button before demanding that he ‘kindly shut the fuck up.’

“Sure...thing, just don't fall in love with me,” he finished, licking his teeth.

Nora chewed at her bottom lip until the blood she tasted wasn't a remnant of his blood in the air, but of her own. The whole thing was her fault - the blood dried under her nails was her fault. He'd gotten shot for her. Just because she wanted to stop and pick hubflowers. 

Hubflowers! - of all the damn things to get shot over. She was angry; scared, but mostly ashamed of herself, and Hancock had the audacity to make smooth jokes and grin at her with that fucking grin that...that was meant to make her feel better because he knew. He knew she thought it was her fault and she knew he didn't agree. 

Saliva filled her mouth, generous enough she had to swallow before parting the soaked cotton of his dress shirt. It was heavy, brown-red and reeked - and under it was just him. 

Nora had yet to see him without the duds. Never seen a bare ghoul either, least not one that wasn't a hungry feral, though as she peeked a look at him he was looking at her like one. A burning cigarette hung out the corner of his mouth, barely kept there but for his tongue pressing it against his lower lip. 

“Hancock,” she breathed, “I'm so sorry.”

“Happens to the best of us, peaches,” he slurred, sounding as though he had coarse sand in his throat, “I'm lucky it was just the jerking off arm that got the hole in it.”

Nora tried not to - she really, truly did try, but she laughed anyway, nearly spitting with the velocity of it. She immediately covered her mouth with a bloody, sticky hand, trying desperately to hold in any other errant giggles. If he got her going, who knew when she’d stop. The old adrenaline was leaving her partly numb, which was a perfect breeding ground for cracks in the psyche.

“...bastard,” she cursed, smiling despite herself; despite this. 

He slumped against the base of the sofa, head tossed back with a lazy smile, cigarette ash landing on the open collar of his vest, looking at her with those black, painful eyes that still managed to shine with amusement. The boneless fingers at his side were flipping the lighter around, bouncing back the gleam of fluorescent lights above their heads.

“Gonna be a rough few weeks,” he told her, the thin line of smoke curling up from his cigarette going choppy as his lips moved. 

“I'll lend you a hand,” she joked, still buzzing as she slid a stim into his arm. The words that ran out her mouth didn't even register beyond noise until her ears began ringing with the silence. Shit, she thought, feeling suddenly sick with nerves. It was a long, tedious journey from staring at the stimpack between her fingers to finally meeting his wet, black stare.

Hancock was watching her - his smile gone as though it'd never been there to start with. That lazy gaze had gone hot; depthless and Nora felt her fingers retreating - the stim clamoring to the floor. 

Don’t do it, she warned herself. There was a fine line between friends and lovers, and while her thoughts hadn’t been the purest in regards to him lately it didn’t mean now was the time - nor did it mean there should ever be a time for it. This world wasn’t meant for romances. Falling in love only happened in the old world...and Nora knew quickly she was never able to distinguish between lust and love all that well. If she touched him now - if she laid her hands on him now she’d regret it later.

Don’t do it, she repeated, but alas, like all things she rarely listened the rational part. 

She pulled in an uneven breath, reached forward and grazed his bare chest. The jagged landscape of scars, skin and half exposed muscle tickled the pads of her fingers. John inhaled, chest expanding, and as though it were natural her fingers followed his chest down on his exhale, pressing her palms flush against the damp heat of him. He was hard and soft - horrific and beautiful. He felt like the way her eyes first touched the ruined landscape of this world. How could it have been so serene as utterly destroyed as it was? That was Hancock, she realized; taking in the topography of his chest, down his navel to the jut of his hips, cinched with the American flag of the old world. 

Dried blood filled the trenches of his skin. He stank of blood and sweat and tobacco...but somehow she found it exhilarating; arousing, maybe.

Deep in discovery, she felt a tickle along her arm. She cut her eyes over and found his fingers barely kissing her skin and then, suddenly, his palm was running up her shoulder, along the back of her neck.

Abruptly his fingers seized within her hair, ripping a gasp out of her just as her hands slid off his chest, grasping the sofa cushions behind him. She felt jerked; lead like a dog on a leash as he pulled her into him. All that pain she’d read in his eyes earlier was gone. Had he been playing her? Had this just been him taking an opportunity by the hand when he found it? 

She swallowed, watching him pull the wet cigarette out from the corner of his mouth slowly with what seemed like all the time in the world. Smoke curled out his nose...the smell of him all around her...

“John,” she warned just before he jerked her mouth against his, open and hot and ravenous. The contact brought out a groan from him, so solid and deep that her stomach jolted. A chill ran down her spine as the touch of teeth raced across her lower lip. 

This was...wrong, her brain tried; failing. 

He was high, not that he wasn’t usually, but this must have been different. The pain, the close brush with death and then the chems and her blatant touching of his exposed body. No, she was taking advantage of him….she had to be…

“...John,” she tried, spoken against his lips, but his fingers tightened in her hair and his other hand slid around her back, reached down and took a handful of her ass like he owned it. The rough, surprising grip made her throat squeal - made her mouth open which allowed the sneaky bastards tongue to reach past her teeth to stroke her own. 

That was how one of the tarberry workers found them - with her knee up between his legs, her hands stuffed into the cushions and John with a handful of her in each palm, tongue tracing a map of her mouth with a series of crude, sloppy moans. It didn’t escape her notice that they’d been walked in on and somewhere in the back of her mind she knew for certain it hadn’t escaped John’s either, but when he move it wasn’t to pull away, it was to roll his hips up into her planted knee.

He was hard. 

Nora saw a million neon signs flashing behind her eyes. She saw stop signs and red lights - warning signs blinking in all the spectrums of the rainbow. 

As soon as it had begun, it seemed, it was over. She left the warmth and the wet of his hungry mouth and shot an embarrassed look over to the frozen worker in the doorway. No words would come. Out the corner of her eye, she could see Hancock smirking, licking his lips like a cat that just ate a good meal. The heat - the anxiety tinged arousal filled her cheeks as a red rash. Against her knee, she could still feel the thick pulse of him through the coarse fabric of his pants.

“I-” she started, plucking up the barest amount of courage only for Hancock to dig his fingers into her rear end, choking down her words.

“Ain’t no one ever heard of knocking around here...?” he rasped, chummy as all hell but also threatening. 

Nora gave John a rough glare, cheeks flaming as she tore his hands off her, huffing as the uncomfortable itch of the lone ghoul in the corridor stared at her; eyes wide. This was not how it should have gone. And the look - the eyes on her. She hated it. And she hated John the most for still having that lazy grin on his face, no doubt proud of himself.

“You’re fine now, Hancock,” she muttered, shoving on her hood and goggles.

“Where you goin’, peaches?” genuine confusion, but he was still smirking sluggishly up at her. She thought for a moment that it might have fallen into a frown by the time she’d gotten up and left him there on the floor, but she didn’t stick around to find out. By nightfall all the workers, Wiseman included would know that Hancock and her were...whatever they thought they were. All the caravans would know eventually, and then the news would spread like wildfire. 

Nora learned quickly to never underestimate the power of gossip in the Commonwealth, even now as it was, devoid of news stations and regularly circulated articles. The spotlight would shine again. 

She licked her lips quickly, tasting John on them, shivering. 

The dark clouds in the distance flickered with lightning and even through the filthy wall of her hood she could smell the rain; taste it in the air, mingled with the salty, meaty taste of him.

A few workers watched her curiously as she kicked over an old tin can, making her way briskly to the old playground. Once there she found the hard case in her back pocket, fed herself two mentats and sank down on a rusty, noisy swing.

Must have looked like a dejected child, she thought, swinging listlessly against the incoming rain. 

“All will be well,” she whispered to herself, closing her eyes to the darkened state of the world through her goggles. In ten minutes time she’d feel better; less manic and shaken. 

She should have popped one before tending to John; before pulling a bullet out of him within that dangerous numb phase just before a panic attack. That’s all this was, she reminded herself. Just old adrenaline and anxiety and that tension of being watched gave her. For that man to catch her in the middle of such an intimate and confusing moment...was it any wonder she started falling down that jagged rabbit hole?

Ten minutes eventually passed by and then fifteen and twenty, and when she was good and relaxed, feeling the world was once more on her side and nothing could get under her skin - it began to rain. It was always raining, she realized, smiling. It was intoxicating - the cool droplets staining her suit, leaking past her hood to her hair below. 

Slowly, she shucked off her goggles and slid the hood away. Each singular droplet seemed to wash away the sweat and blood from her face. Her hair hung heavy down her shoulders. So chilling…so refreshing.

Nora knew the exact moment when Hancock walked into the fenced-in space of the playground. She knew how close he was before he even spoke. It didn't make sense that she knew, she just did…

“Hey. You still mad at me?”

“No,” she told him, calmly. It was hard to tell, with the pitter-patter of rain, but she swore she heard him sigh. 

The rain made the world blurry when she finally opened her eyes, but she could spot John from a mile away. He was partly dressed, his hat shoved over his head at a crooked angle and the buttons on his dress shirt uneven. It was a little humorous and she almost laughed - one too many mentats for that, though. She was blissfully numb at this point. But she did manage a smile at the sorry state of him. 

“Well, I gotta say you don’t look too chill in my opinion. I’m thinkin’ I crossed the line this time,” he admitted, looking as displeased as he could with the pleasurable lull of med-x coursing through his system. “The uh...med-x hit me harder than I'd thought I guess. Just can't trust home brewed.”

“Mm,” she moaned in reply, watching him think through his words before speaking them. 

She might have been too calm and collected for this conversation, but alas, it was better than the furious anxiety she’d felt before. “It’s not that - it’s just...I would have preferred no one walk in during...that.”

Hancock gave her an obvious, telling look that made her lips curl wider. 

He walked towards her through the soft blanket of rain, pausing a few feet in front of her. His undershirt was stained pink as the rain tried to bleed away most of the blood, but the ragged hole in his shoulder sleeve still looked black around the edges, almost as though the fabric burnt against the speed of the bullet. 

“Look, if it makes ya feel better I’ll call ‘em all liars when the word gets out. The last thing I want is ruinin’ what we got.”

The bottomless black of his eyes shined; wet with rain and chems and honesty. Nora wasn’t sure what to say, nor what to do. The lust to love concerned her - the way she felt wasn’t necessarily confusing, not in the way that it’d have been when she was younger. She knew how she felt, but that didn’t make this any easier. Hancock didn’t strike her as the monogamous type and as much as she’d tried to be open when she had married Nate, she just couldn’t manage the jealous anxiety of it all. 

Hancock was more trouble than he was worth in that regard - at least that’s what she told herself. 

She didn’t mind his flirtatious ways, in fact, it was one of the many things she found charming about him and with a few mentats in her she liked to tease right back...but this today - it was too real. There wasn’t a chance in hell she could let herself be distracted by him when there were bigger things to worry about. Shaun being one of those things. 

“I can’t, John,” she told him, as hard as it was to say - she told him, somehow managing to look him in the eyes when she said it, “I can’t be distracted when I have so much to focus on - not now.”

He understood, and even though she saw him smile at her, nodding and agreeing and eventually laughing - she knew that while Mayor Hancock patted her shoulder, telling her it was all water under the bridge, it really wasn’t…

She knew then she didn't want it to be either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for everyone that read, commented and left kudos. I'm nearing the end of what I have already had written, another chapter or two to go. Let me know what you think of this. I have a bunch for shorter escapades that I may begin fleshing out after this one. :)


	8. Chapter 8

Bunker Hill was something Hancock had never bothered to see up close. Sure, in his younger days of scouring for the best chems and their respective dealers he’d see the white, phallic thing jutting up into the clouds a few times. Always a good landmark when he got lost in a fit. 

Their welcome was abrasive and at the same time cowardly as all get out. What happened to the old school way of doing business? Blood for blood - not this bribery bullshit they seemed way more proud of than ashamed. 

Raiders still won and the traders still got fucked. Made no sense to him. 

Nora lifted a sneer at it same as he did, he could always tell despite the mask, but she kept her mouth shut. He got a load of defensive anger thrown at him for callin’ ‘em no better than radroaches. 

From the rehearsed rebuttal spat down at him, he hadn’t been the first to insult their ‘ways’. The sweet slice of damp vault girl beside him jabbed an elbow under his ribs, hissing out a warning laced with a playful tenor. No way she could get mad at him, he realized, smirking low. If he could steal a hot kiss under the guise of a high then no amount of witty insults could make her angry with him. Might be he'd sprout a hard-on if she managed a real glare for him...

“Whichever way you and your fellow traders have found to survive out here, we won’t judge you,” she began, lying through her teeth, “only God knows what I’ve done to keep myself out of the gutter. All we’re looking for is to cut a deal with some of your caravans. There’s no need for us to get off on the wrong foot.”

What a way with words, he thought, admiring her chem manifested candor. Whatever worked, indeed. 

They got through the gates, greeted first and foremost by a kid that Hancock figured would turn into quite the swindler one day. Nora politely declined the paid tour. She was all business after that and the great thing about standing back while Nora worked her magic was he got to slide his sunglasses on, lean against whatever suitable object he could find and enjoy the supple curves of her ass without judgment.

When she'd shift her weight from heel to heel - the curves of her bottom nearly bouncing - he'd feel his lips pull back, teeth baring like a hungry dog. It seemed to intimidate people as well, which Nora loved. Might not love the reasons so much, but what she didn't know didn't hurt. 

“We’ll be needing routes set up here,” she was gesturing to a map one of the Caravaners had spread out on the table. 

Two other well-dressed men were leaning over as well, eyeing her gliding fingers. “And here. My main concern is this location. It’s not well within any other settlements I know of, but it looks like your route takes you just a few miles to the east of it.”

Nora smiled up at a woman with long blonde hair, strong jowls, and a mean look, but the woman nodded, eyes narrowing in thought.

John wondered how Nora got anything done with the common folk. Did they all have these perverse, depraved needs when confronted with her? Or was he just a special case? Couldn't be. She was like something out of the mags and her personality didn't help one ignore her. 

“What would you be offering again? Tarberries? You know I can’t recall much of a demand for ghoul harvested tarberries.”

Nora's voice grated, “If you think that’d be a deal-breaker for the brothers then just lie. What’s the problem?”

“...word could get around,” the woman muttered, training him with a suspicious glance. John kept his mouth drawn in a line, unwilling to make much of a move if it meant a deal going sour. He knew how this shit went. The supply line that fed Goodneighbour didn’t appear outta thin air after all.

“It’s well barricaded. Plenty of space to rest between here and Night Shift Brewing. It’s a stone's throw from your normal trek and I’m offering a good deal. You take it now or I’ll find someone else that appreciates a good offer.”

John could feel the bombs Nora was throwing at the woman, those plush lips going thin and stern no doubt. 

Quickly he turned away to light up a smoke, watching out the corner of his eye as she leaned in, ass pushed out lusciously while trying to pen out directions on their maps. 

Think about the reek of rotten meat, he told himself; think about blood on the pavement, nightmares...any number of the diamond city scum. Had to get him mind off her or his cock would steer him where it wanted him. His intimidation factor would really go belly up if he was sportin’ a visible erection as well. 

When they all cast their worried glances his way he brought the cherry up into the shadows of his tricorner, inhaled and smirked. One of the suits paled, subtly moving around the table, putting a defense between them. Bingo. 

Whatever shame these merchants had attached to their bigotry kept them from saying anything hateful while he was here. And whatever fear he instilled in them was making Nora’s job easier. 

“I’ll take your offer, but I don’t want those ghouls to start cutting deals as soon as we show up. You let them know our arrangement and it stays, no haggling for a better cut,” the woman said, seemingly unaffected by his presence at all. Gotta commend her for that, he guessed. 

“Of course,” Nora smiled saccharin, “I’ll be sending our guys from Hangman’s Alley with the supplies. The main man’s name is Saul...and don’t say anything about the eye, please,” she shook hands and just like that the deal was done. 

Hancock watched under the rim of the glasses, as she lingered, tapping practiced fingers on her pipboy. Sending a message back to Hangman’s Alley, or maybe making a note to tell blondie about the stick up her ass, hopefully.

This no-nonsense, stern version of her made him want to throw himself at her feet - let her plant her boot down on his shoulder as she rode his mouth in front of them all. Ah, now that would surely scare the shit out of blondie. 

When Nora finally looked up, finding his eyes even through the tinted glass, he gave her a devious smirk. He still flirted, had to keep up appearances. As far as she knew her rejection was no skin off his back...

“Glad that’s over with,” she mumbled after saddling up next to him. 

The rain was still coming down. Always raining when she was with him it seemed. Wasn’t a beautiful woman like her suppose to bring sunshine and warmth? John leaned in, grinning, “Thought for sure that blonde one was gonna wrestle you to the ground. Kinda bummed this shit didn't end in a betting circle.”

Her nose wrinkled at him as if ready to say something motherly about his lust for violence but then she was sniffing him unabashedly, fingering the lapel on his collar.

“Damn, sister, you think you could save the hankey pankey for later. Bigots be watchin’.”

He winked, smirking. All an act. 

His heart was hammering like a bad trip but his chest was soaked in heat, pleasure rubbing inside of his stomach. If he’d had skin he might had not been so gentlemanly - might have pulled her in already, opening her mouth up with his tongue and devoured her in front of everyone.

“You reek, you know that?” Yeah, that made more sense. Wouldn’t do that his aroma made her mouth water like hers did him. Ghoul stink, after all, wasn’t known for being an aphrodisiac. Not like whatever she sweated out...

“Well,” he rasped, “as much as I admire you, dollface, you don’t smell much better.” A lie, she smelt fuckin’ edible right now - and damn, was his tongue tinglin’ at the thought of licking that little river of sweat from the side of her neck, down the hollow of her throat and then some. They'd had to work themselves through the close-built homes to evade a group of ferals on their way here, and the sweet smell she leaked while he walked in her shadow was nothing, if not tantalizing. 

“Walking ten miles in the rain will do that I suppose,” she remarked, chuckling lowly. “I wonder if we could find a bath around here, or what passes for one now’adays.”

“Heh, good luck with that, peaches. Might as well ask a Brahmin for a tongue bath.”

“I think that would make us reek more, Hancock.”

Somehow, against all logic, she accosted him an hour or so later while he was having a damn good time at the bar with a bleedin’ heart behind the counter. They’d gotten off to a rough start, this old man threatening not to serve him at all, but John was charming even on a bad day and it didn’t take too long to butter the man up for a bottle on the house. To the people, for the people - just in this case people meant him and a fifth of rum.

Nora crept up on him; her hot breath touched the melted flesh of his ear without any warning. Too close for plain sight too. Luckily it was dark, and the kid that was arguing with his Pa about synths and the good of the Commonwealth, didn’t even notice her. The hood and goggles were missing when he jerked and turned, seeing nothing but a flustered heart-shaped face and the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. What wasn’t perfect about her?

“Follow me,” she whispered, grinning - the traces of mentats showed in the pupils of her eyes, “It turns out caps can buy you almost anything in this place. Who would have thought?”

John stumbled despite how sober he still was. She had that effect on him. He’d come to accept that about her, but it still threw him off his normal game when she all but dragged him under a string of light bulbs, up an uneven set of wooden stairs to a second floored shack, with a damn door to boot. His cock was trying to convince him that this was it - that she’d broken under her passion and gold and glory lay behind that door...between her thighs. 

His chest tightened with nerves.

“No sleepin’ under the stars for us tonight then, huh?” he managed, rasping brokenly. The room was warm, a little humid and smelt of something John couldn’t remember smelling outside The Memory Den. A lone lantern hung in the corner, supplying the only light in the shack. For something made out of half-rotten wood, the place barely creaked when he threw himself into the squishy sofa. 

“After the bath you can put down your roll outside if you insist, but I spent way too much on this. I don't plan on rolling around in the dirt tonight.”

“Hmm?” He hummed, tipping his tricorn over his closed eyes with a sly smirk, enjoying the relative safety and smell of the place - Nora’s charming voice lulling him like the booze couldn’t. Then, he jerked in shock, startled out of his fast found comfort from a stiff kick to the couch. He grasped his hat, keeping it on his head as he tensed, glaring up at a very amused, and rather flushed looking woman. If she kept that expression on there’d be little self-control that’d save her from him.

That smirk on her lips was damn familiar…

“What’s the dig, sweetheart. You lookin’ to get a good hearted guy like me miffed?”

“No. I’m looking to get a stinky sod like you clean,” and then her eyes darted to the back of the room, eyes gleaming with pure mischief. She was perfect. Pure, unadulterated perfection. Right here, right in front of him. He knew he should have tried to get her off while he had her in his grasp back at The Slog. Might be she'd be singing a different tune if she knew what he could do with his tongue - well, what he used to do with it anyway. 

“Wait,” he started, finally realizing her impatient look was directed at him, “What?” 

Hancock followed her gaze, finding a steaming tub shoved against the side of the room. Guess that explained the slightly stuffy humidity of the room - not to mention the warmth that was so different from the crisp cool of the outside. 

“You pullin’ my leg, right?”

“Not that I can see,” she said. Cheeky.

This was...he was going to say too perfect of a moment but then she threw a partially discolored towel in his face, laughing at the disgruntled noise he made on her way out the shack door. 

Would have been better if she'd stayed and joined him, but he wasn't one to complained. He’d at least gotten a moist kiss out of her. Besides, the opportunity provided him a chance to empty his balls for the first time in weeks. The lack of any alone time and the residual ache in his arm had been driving him mad. John wasn’t going to pass up the well needed relief...especially given the way Nora had been affecting him lately.

Jerking himself off in the bath proved enjoyable, if not messy. He had to avoid the water, spending himself in the edge of the damp towel while keeping himself quiet enough that he didn't spook poor Nora on the other side of the door. The creak of wood outside and those mechanical pings on her pipboy proved how close she was the whole time. Her nearness didn't stop him from picturing her spreading herself open for him, though - didn't stop him from cumming hard at the thought of painting her pretty cheeks, either. 

“Damn,” he noted, chuckling at the sight of the tub. The water was a dingy gray, flecked with grit. She hadn't been kidding...hard livin’ left him more filthy than a day-old dead Brahmin. He swore he felt lighter, which the idea of was a bit turning even for him. 

“I told you,” she muttered through the door, knowing. 

Hancock wasn’t sure how he liked the idea of her hearing his hushed exclamation, “You're gonna need some new water, sister. Looks like I killed a swamp monster in here.”

“That bad, huh?”

Yeah, he thought while he dried himself off from head to toe, careful of the little slimy patch where he'd spent himself. “Yea, gonna need another towel to,” he smirked, hearing her huff on the other side of the door. Wouldn’t do for her to rub his cum into her bare skin...

“How'd you manage to dirty that thing up? No-” she silenced him before he could even speak, “I don't want to know. You sit tight...I'll be back.”

It didn't take her long to make her way back to the shack. He'd gotten himself real comfortable by then, feet kicked up on the coffee table, some less dirty clothes on and about three quarters deep in a jet shooter. She kicked open the door without a single knock, a beefy looking man-child behind her. John sank into the cushion, glaring at the kids muscle-lined shoulder.

“Over there,” she pointed and that was that it seemed. 

John watched through a damn good buzz as they changed out the water like lazy summer nats in the distance. They seemed to move with the air, colors trailing. He smiled despite the invasion, dope-pleased and took another sharp hit, draining the shooter. He could hear Nora's sweet voice, thick and echoing. The shack door closed, vibrating his spine, pulling a lengthy moan out of him. Some things just felt too good to be real sometimes. Chems...a hot bath and Nora. 

Nora was putting her hands on the sofa beside him, so close. Then, without warning, his body was jarred. She was turning his world upside down. The seat under his ass came with him. Suddenly he was staring at the side wall, at a faded painting of a boat with no captain. 

“What the hell just happened?” He asked, his own voice so slow and slurring. 

“While you were home with the lights turned off I got my bath going. You're to stare at this painting while I enjoy it. No peeking.”

She couldn't be serious…” You ain't serious right, peaches? I ain't the sober type right now..feeling a little bold if you catch my meaning.”

“No excuses,” was all she gave him. She must have really wanted this bath then, he reckoned, frowning at the painting now. How did she expect him to behave himself with the jet in his system. Hell, even dry he'd have a hard time keeping to any promises like this. John grinned, he didn't exactly promise her.

Crisis averted. 

Hancock threw his arm up over the back of the couch - heavy and weightless at once - and gifted her a boyish smile, his eyes bee-lining on her over the tub. 

“Eyes on the boat!” She snapped, cheeks already hot from the steam. She wasn't even undressed. What was the big deal? Not even a good glimpse of her suit unzipped - not even a little eyeful of generous cleavage for his dirty dreams tonight.

John didn't turn around. Didn't see any point to it. Let her kick him out if she wanted her privacy. 

Three minutes later John was smoking a cigarette outside, kicking his feet over the soft rotten wood underneath him, frowning deeply. He felt dejected, like a punished pooch tossed outside for riflin’ through the scraps.

He could hear Nora behind him, through the door with perfect clarity. It made his fingers twitch. Every splash made him more nervous. How much had she heard of him when it had been his turn? His own, furious stroking of his cock hadn't been exactly soundless, and he might have grunted a bit. From outside he could even hear her knuckles rapping the porcelain under the water as she shifted. There wasn’t any way in hell she hadn’t heard him masturbating.

This was bull, he thought grumpily. The jet had long worn off by the time he heard her clamoring out the tub and the bottle of whiskey he'd taken with him from the bar was back inside the shack. He was locked out until she gave the word. 

The sharp sound of water sleuthing over the floor itched in his skull. She heard it all. Didn't she? She heard him beating his meat like a lusty teenager and didn't say a damn word. Didn't move from outside the door. Fuck, if that didn't get him furiously hard again nothing would. He paced a few times, feeling a jumpy sort of high despite how dry he was. 

Nora’s feet padded wetly around inside, paused and he did the same, listening intently.

“Alright, the coast is clear,” he heard her mumble - the subtle shift of fabric making his heart thud like the running sound of a hungry mutant. She was wrapped in her vault suit and nothing else, standing with her hip turned out, a small off-colored towel musing in her hair. He could see her gaze on him, hidden under the dark wet strings; studying him silently. 

Don’t look at her like a starving mongrel, he warned himself, but alas that was a losing battle and he stared as hard as he ever did, if not a bit more now that the stupid ammo belt wasn’t obscuring the supple curve of her stomach. Always would have his filthy dreams, he figured, grabbing one last look before settling himself down on the couch with a long, tired groan.

“I still have to sign some stuff over in the morning, but then…” her voice wavered for a fraction of a second, but more than long enough for him to warrant throwing a curious glance her way. The black in her eyes widened, looking through him, or trying to “...then I want - no, I need to head south-west. The Glowing Sea.”

John grinned, “You lookin’ to make yourself as pretty as me, sweetheart?” 

He chuckled and gave her a wide smile but saw none of the humor that the obvious joke should have shown. Naw, that ain’t right. No one in their right mind would take a trip that far south of the green. Not even someone as well equipt to handle the putrid radiation as himself. 

“What? You ain’t serious?” She couldn’t be.

“I am,” she said with conviction, lips set thin in that determined expression that both frustrated him and got his lower region ticklin’. The towel slid down her shoulder off to the floor as she sat down beside him - the cushions dipping, trying to move him into her. Would if I could, he thought - would if she’d let me. But this woman was all sorts of crazy it seemed.

John must have looked perplexed, ‘cause Nora just shook her head at him, frowning, before doing her best to explain it all to him, “I told you I was looking for someone. Well, there’s a good chance I know of someone there that can help me find him and I’ve put this off long enough...I can’t stall any longer, Mayor Hancock.”

Back to formal titles then? That hurt a bit more than it ought to, he thought, absorbing her words as best he could with his mind trying to get elsewhere with the way she was leanin’ into him like this - all warmth and soft blue curves. 

Eventually, he swallowed, shoving those nasty thoughts down. Despite her hip pushed softly into his he managed an eloquent enough reply, “Wouldn’t want you goin’ in there alone. You still game for some company?”

Nora’s lips curled, looking about as relieved as he’d ever seen her. “I am - always if it means you.”

“Ah,” he grinned, banging his knee into her own, “That a girl. I was gettin’ worried you were gonna withdraw into that shell of yours for good.”

Her smile slipped, eyes losing that soft crinkle of happiness under them. Nora inhaled, closed the distance between them, and damn him, but he froze, preparing for her sweet lips again, but she rested her forehead on his shoulder and hugged him loosely around the middle. 

“Me too,” she admitted, with all the breath of a weighty confession. 

John bit the tip of his tongue, ignored the need to turn her head away from his chest - to feast himself on her mouth and drag her by her ass into his lap. How he managed he wasn’t too sure, but he did and that was all that mattered. She meant more to him that a hunk of flesh to play with after all...even if she was harder to kick than the chems ever had been…

“Let's get this show on the road then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for reading, commenting and leaving me kudos! Let me know what you think of this chapter if you have the time and please forgive any typos/grammatical errors. <3


	9. Chapter 9

John knew without a doubt that he was dreaming. The edges of his vision were blurred much like a deep jet high. The soft curve of her breasts that threatened to spill out of her top filled his vision just before her thumbs hooked in the lapels of his coat. Her movements were sluggish yet fast, somehow too quick to see just right, leaving behind trails of blue that blended into the backdrop of a nameless place in time. He always seemed to dream in a jet high...

John savored the fantasy - he always loved dreaming about her.

“Nora…” he breathed.

“John,” she echoed as if under water, “you really expect me to believe you’re the shy silent type after all your innuendo and flirting?”

This woman threw him off guard even while he was in the waking world, but here he was even more confused. Felt like he was tossed into the middle of a shadow show without memorizing his lines. For whatever reason he felt like he needed to pop some day tripper. The flirting was all in good fun when he hadn’t tasted her yet. But these dreams were becoming more frequent since that day - a bittersweet memory considering the pain he’d been in at the time. 

“Cat got your tongue? Do you want to catch mine? Or is it too bold of me to just use it how I see fit...maybe down here...” John felt pressure in his lap, over his groin. Such sweet, all-encompassing bliss that only a wet dream could give him. It was real yet unreal - good, it was good but it couldn’t compare to the real thing, John knew.

She came on strong...more than he’d expected, even here.

Nora slid down to her knees, between his thighs. His gut clenched painfully at the sight of her, peering up at him with a slight red hue staining her cheeks. As hard as he squinted he could only see the barest hint of her features. Those predator-like eyes blinking slow and black and blurry. Those cute little dimples he found himself looking at almost as much as her ass were mere shadows. Carefully she placed her palms on his knees; tongue peeking out between her lips “If it helps, you can put me where you want me…”

Damn, that struck him hard.

Nora smiled, looking almost innocent if it weren’t for her being on her knees, between his legs, with her palms sliding up his thighs. He heard himself swallow when her thumbs rubbed circles over the seams on his inner thighs. His cock twitched visibly in his pants.

“Do you want me to bend over your desk, Mr. Mayor?” she offered, but her fingers skimming up and down his thighs promised something way better than that. He’d be a complete fool to let this pass up. By all rights, he shouldn’t feel as nervous as he did. In a dream no less. Yet here he was, his fingers tapping over the cushions of the couch.

“Naw,” he finally muttered, summoning the strength to talk through the heavy blanket of slumber, “why pass this up, huh?”

Nora’s smile split in two, “It’d be a real shame, indeed.”

Her fingers dove for the button at his pants, her wrist brushing his stiff cock - the cotton slid like a moist tongue under her touch. A strangled sound leaked out of his throat as she went to work. Nora licked her lips, slipping a button out and then the clasp, “I plan on getting rough with you, Hancock.”

This time, John did choke, stuttering out a bestial moan when his cock sprang free, bouncing against his stomach. The air braised him like a hot flash from a dirty bomb. So real despite every other telling detail. Her breathy chuckle forced a sloppy smile over his mouth. She sure was something else. Nora had a good grip on him everywhere. Every breath, every displacement of air when she shifted struck him like a caress.

“John…” He lifted his hips off the couch as she worked his pants off, taking with them his boots. Her tongue flicked like a minx, barely touching what he needed her against the most. 

“Don’t get too cheeky with me, Mr. Mayor,” she warned, opening her mouth wide for him. Yeah, cheeky. Hancock wet his bottom lip as the firm pressure laved along the underside of his cock - the warmth - the heat - the... 

“John,” she whispered, ragged and small. John wasn’t sure how she could speak with her mouth full, but then it came again, but louder. “John, Joh-”

His eyes snapped open seeing nothing but black. 

Her hair was in his mouth, in his eyes and choking him with a fatal inhale through his nose. The dream tore away just like that but all that heat and pleasure lingered, even deeper than before. Blood surged between his legs, throbbing so deeply he could feel it stretching the fabric of his pants. The density of her hip filled his palm and something even softer filled his other hand. He squeezed, choking on a groan of thick bliss as her backside pressed back inside the divot of his hips. A nipple stiffened into his palm, her breast spilling out between his fingers.

For fuck’s sake... 

He knew where he was and where he wasn’t, and this was exactly what he’d warned her about before he agreed to get in bed with her.

“Fuckin’ hell, John…” she gasped, shivering softly against him. The plush flesh of her ass covered only in that skin-tight vault suit cupped his erection like a damn vice. He was pretty sure he could feel her heartbeat through his cock despite the thick pulsations of blood gushing within his dick. Not good - this wasn’t good. Well...it was more than good, for him, just not for her. 

“Bad timing. Bad all around,” he grumbled, pulling his hands off her as carefully as he could manage. 

“No shit,” she breathed.

“I warned ya, sister,” he reminded her, trying and failing to cull the sound of frustration in his waking rasp. Nora shook again, making a soft whistling sound before moaning pitifully. What an insufferable bastard this made of him. Humpin’ her dry in the middle of a wet dream while she suffered the dregs of radiation sickness. But damn did it make her warm…damn did it make her receptive. All that grinding back into him hadn’t just been a hallucination - he knew how to differentiate those from reality...mostly.

“Don’t worry,” she managed, laughing in a way that made his gut roll in disgust, “I’ll...get you back...later…”

“Yeah, sure thing, peaches…” he muttered, rolling over to fist inside her pack blindly. A soft ‘bleep’ preceded the sudden glow of green from her pipboy. John breathed out a ‘thanks’, still feeling sick and aroused. He pushed a heel into his cock and exhaled hard enough to melt iron. Not the time or the place, he reminded himself.

She chugged the bottle of water he pressed to her shoulder as quick as it took him to find it, collapsing on her back with a tired sigh after the final drop. It didn’t escape his notice how her breasts bounced under the suit. The empty plastic rolled across the uneven floor to smack into the side wall as he stared. 

The Glowing Sea held enough dangers for her, and yet the only danger here for him seemed to be her. Just her and those delicious curves that she came with.

“What time is it?” she asked, weak and small. Hancock braced himself before leaning over her, close enough he could smell the addictive tang of sweat on her. Her arm was limp as he turned the pipboy, reading the time.

“Half past three in the morning.” They’d only been asleep a few hours, that is, if she’d slept at all.

“Shouldn’t feel this bad still…” That familiar trace of fear coated her words. 

Mixin’ mentats and radaway was never smart, he’d told her. While they’d worked together that evening to get a vein on her for the needle, he kept her fingers out his coat pocket - reaching for his ‘tats case. Radaway by itself induced nausea and sweating, all the feelings she told him accompanied her panic attacks. He knew why she wanted to pop a couple. The mental fed off the physical she’d told him a long time ago. He had to watch her as the noxious fluid drain into her system while she shivered, counting her breaths and wringing her hands in her lap. After the bag drained she’d asked him to hold her - to be close to her. Nora needed comfort and he’d obliged her, but not without a fair warnin’ in case she noticed a poke in her rump later.

Been more than a little poke, he realized as he sat beside her watching her pupils dilated as the panic started coming back.

“Hey, now,” he told her, running a palm over her shoulder, flicking away some strands of hair, “that crap takes time and you soaked up enough rads for you an’ that third arm that’s growin’ on your stomach there.” He gave her a gentle poke and smirked.

Nora’s lips twitch into a smile, “Speaking of third appendages…”

John felt the heat he’d soaked up layin’ by her drain in one go. She turned her eyes up at him, matching his now faded smirk like a pro. How did she expect him to keep himself in check when she did things like this? Teasin’ him like this. He wasn’t made of stone and despite the grizzled outward appearance, he was still a man, flesh and blood underneath. And hell, he’d warned her about it before hand. It was her fault if anything. 

Eventually, in his silence, she spoke up, “Sorry, I...I’m not proficient as this sort of thing or maybe it’s the fever. Do I have a fever, John?” She called him John again. That was something at least. He laid his mangled hand over her glistening forehead after gulping like a fool. She was cool to the touch but sweaty.

“Must have broke,” he told her, throwing in a wide grin when she looked unconvinced, “It’s just the come down from the juice, you’ve felt it before.”

“I know...it’s just, hard.” Hard, yeah… “My brain keeps telling me I’m at death’s door…”

John watched her silently as her eyes fluttered closed, sucking in air between her moist lips to expel it through her nose, “...when can I have a mentat?”

“Soon,” he promised, feeling his cock stir again when she pulled the zipper on her suit down, far enough the bridge of her cream-colored bra filled his vision. She whispered a broken apology, but that did little good when the sweat started pooling down between her breasts, over the generous slopes only to disappear into the stifling fabric of blue. He wanted to dip his tongue down there and never get back up.

“You should just take it off,” he suggested, knowing full well how he sounded and hoping she just ignored the drop in his voice. In all fairness she should take it off - let the sweat dry - but why would she when he was sneaking looks at her every chance he got. Should just offer to turn around, like that’d solve anything…

Instead of ignoring him; instead of any number of things she could have done she followed his ‘advice’ and slid the zipper down past her belly button, sighing gently with the flood of cool air, “You’re right...but this isn’t going to end well…” 

On the contrary, he thought, watching her get her arm caught in the slick fabric. Nora groaned, jerked half-hearted and threw him a look that brought his hands to her. He helped her arms out of the suit, got her sitting upright to assist her in getting the rest of it off her. It was like peeling off a second layer of skin. No wonder he couldn’t help lookin’ at her when they were alone and even when they weren’t. 

A pink pale, gleaming scar curved like a smile just above the thin string of her underwear and for a brief moment he forgot about having her half naked against him - forgot about all the exposed skin and the rich curves and the sweet, tangy smell of her.

“What the hell happened here?” he blurted, unthinking as he skimmed his thumb over it as if he could wipe it away.

“Complications,” she whispered, not meeting his eyes as she kicked her legs out of the folds of fabric, rolling away from him, giving him her back. Should have been openly admiring her ass right now, but instead, his thumb was burning from the smooth scar. Nasty and deep, and not all that old from the feel of it…

He spent the next thirty minutes on his back, peeking curious looks over at her shoulder trying to find it in him to ask again. What could have caused something so long and precise? Surgical incision, maybe. Something pre-war no doubt. Some internal trauma that required one of those fancy doctors and a sterile, white room. What bothered John the most was realizing that he didn’t know as much about her as he though, he did, least not much about her before she woke up in his world. 

As time passed he fished around in the inner pocket of his coat, gave his mentats a little shake and felt Nora shifted beside him. 

“Time yet?” she asked softly, maybe halfway to sleep. 

“Yeah,” he rasped, popping the lid on his case just as she rolled over, breasts swaying. The taut line of her stomach stretched and creased as her hips shimmied, dragging the lower strip of her underwear down past her hipbone. Just kill him now, he thought as he pulled out a berry flavored ‘tat for her. Strike him dead a toss a bag of wet cement over him for good measure.

Nora looked over at him with a heavy-lidded expression, eyes red-rimmed and glassy. She looked exhausted, but that wasn't just it…there was something else he couldn't quite put his finger on. He realized what is was when he went to give her the caplet, though and found her with her tongue stuck out for him.

Those eyes of hers were brighter now, but no less narrowed in a seductive edge. She’d looked at him like this before, he recalled. That night in The Third Rail, several shooters deep and her legs draped over his thighs. Same look now as then.

The sound of him swallowing was deafening as he gave the purple mentat between his fingers a cautious look before turning on his side. Nora opened up for him; her tongue glistening. Hot breath swept up over his knuckles as he placed the ‘tat on her tongue. A little dab of saliva moistened his thumb…

Her lips closed, eyes still heavy on him, “I changed my mind, John.”

“On what?” All the blood had rushed to his cock already at the mere implication in her gaze - no way she could expect him to know what in the hell she was talkin’ about at a time like this.

“Come here,” she whispered, murmured; sang like a flock of morning birds. 

Her dexterous fingers, so smooth, tugged on the lapels of his coat. Hancock felt all his confidence drain out of him - all the hurried fucks, careful nights, and fumblings seemed un-lived at the prospect of what his mind flashed before him. Like a damned kid again. She made him forget what to do with a woman...not that any of them could be the same creature as her in all fairness. Wasn’t another woman like her left in the world.

She was dragging him in. Nora, goddamn. She was sliding along his body, pressing her thighs against his own and watching him with those predatory eyes. Her lips parted, leaving a little divot of darkness between the plush cushions.

He was dreamin’ again.

But when she leaned in and brushed her lips against his mouth it felt way too real. There was no chemtrail blending her movements in against the air. No heavy blanket of slumber over his chest when her sweet tongue flicked out, wetting his ragged lower lip. This was real. Nora - real, living, breathing and blood-gushing Nora. And she was kissing his mouth with a sluggish fervor that shouldn’t have really existed.

Fuck it, though. He ain’t ever been a man to ignore a good stroke of luck. Was too soon for it to be the mentats talkin’ anyways. Whatever her reasons, they were good enough for him and he was, if anything, starved for her in both body, mind and soul by this point.

“Damn, peaches…” John cursed.

He took a good fistful of her soft hair with little warning, pulling her in closer. As soon as she moaned - lips loosening - he was there, opening his mouth along hers, tasting the residue of berries and that delicious flavor he’d been craving since The Slog.

A quiet whine snuck into his mouth from her throat just as her hands flatten out over his chest, quickly sliding up around to the back of his neck, dragging him further into her biting kisses. Her nails curled into the tarnished skin at the base of his scalp, making him light headed like a mild jet high.

Let this happen, he begged to himself. Don’t let her get spooked again. His heart and his desperate dick just couldn’t take it. She’d kill ‘im. John was certain of it.

The flood of bliss that spread out through his lower body as she gasped and sighed - licking into his mouth in search of his tongue - was better than the chems by a long shot. If he’d known this was what she’d make him feel like he’d have pried her out of the freezer when he still had his skin…might have tried to rescue her like a prince in one of those pre-war fables.

“Fuck,” he hissed as her hips twisted, rolling them up into his covered cock sharp and fast. There wasn’t any doubt that the idea of him - a ghoul - didn’t throw her off. No one kissed a ghoul like she was kissin’ him now without accepting what they were getting into. Hell, if she didn’t mind tongue fucking his mouth maybe his depraved fantasy of her licking his dick like a popsicle wasn’t too farfetched.

“Yes,” she breathed, peeling her lips off his long enough to whisper to him, “John, make me come?”

Yeah, his mind reeled; thundering in his ears. Fuck yea.

John scrambled, viciously getting himself out of his red frock fast enough so she wouldn’t realize the consequences of her request. It was one thing for a woman to try and get a fuck out of him for some chems or a place to sleep, but this was Nora and all she’d get out of this deal was him. Just him and the needy pooch she’d make of him after this, and one hell of an orgasm of course.

“You sure?” he had to ask, even though his fingers were already hooked under the thin straps around her hips.

Out the corner of his vision, he saw her nodding; chest heaving with uneven breaths. The pink scar smiling from under her navel glared at him as she lifted her hips, but he bit his lip when the question crept up. He slid the cream-colored cotton off, down her hips, her thighs and then they were gone.

Make her come, huh? He was gonna feast on her like a dying man until the fuckin’ deathclaws could hear her screams through the steel walls.

Maybe screaming was a bit too hopeful to ask for, but the jagged cry she gave was just as good, if not better than any exaggerated mewlings he’d heard before. Her voice cracked with the force as soon as he had her thighs spread around his head and his lips latched onto the tangy bundle of flesh he’d wanted a taste of for so long now. His tongue slid up under the nerves, flattened out before he started swirling it up and down - firm, then soft and then a soft suckle before circling her again and again. 

“...oh god,” Nora whimpered, churning her hips back and forth, shoving herself into his hungry mouth. Hancock could feel the thigh muscles under his palms quivering. If he wasn’t careful she’d uncoil sooner than he’d want. 

“More,” she moaned.

More, he chanted; mouthed it into her slippery folds before giving her folds a rough suck. More of her sweetness and moans flowed. He wanted more of her. Always more. Nothing tasted as good as the desire she leaked as she shivered against his hungry mouth. He’d waited too long for this...

“H-h-hancock…” she stuttered.

John nipped at her, feeling daring now that she was stroking his scalp with her fingers, having knocked off his tricorner with a flailing knee between his first few solid licks and now. She was feelin’ it good, he knew. The way her stomach muscles jumped under his palm and how the back of her knee draped over his shoulder was going damp with sweat, she was close.

Just a bit more, he knew. 

In all honesty, he could drag this out for hours if she’d let him, but the way her hips gyrated and the damp moans leaked out of her told John she needed this more than he did. If he made this as mind expanding as he wanted to, Nora would let him do this for her again, and again. The decision was an easy one. So, as her back arched, he slid his hand down her inner thigh, spread her wider and slid one finger inside the searing heat of her body, curling it up.

Those moans were cut off with the first stroke. The room went quiet but for the wet, sloppy sound of his lips and tongue working her over. His fingers dug into her hip as Nora tensed and buckled, cumming. John could feel the little contractions fluttering around his finger. Her fingernails scratched at his scalp, trying and failing to pull him further in before her arm flopped to her side; lifeless.

Her body went limp under his hands; in his hands and against his mouth. He gave her one final, rebellious lick before pulling out his soaked finger - a string of pure moisture bridging between her and the tip. He couldn’t help himself, he licked his finger clean before planting his palms beside her hips, staring down at her with a shiny grin.

Her eyes were nearly closed, lips parted and panting, “I...fuck, don’t look at me like that.”

“How, exactly? Like I just got you off in less than five?” he asked, licking his lower lip real slow-like for show, “cause it looks like I did.”

Nora cracked a smile, obviously trying not to, but failing, “Felt like more than five minutes to me...I feel even weaker than earlier.”

“That’s fair,” he replied, sucking on his tongue to get the taste of her back on his pallet. His cock surged inside his pants almost forgotten after he’d been so preoccupied with her and her sweet cunt. It was stuck at an odd angle against his hip, pulsing frustratingly. Not great, but he could beat himself off later. He didn’t want to push his luck. Not now at any rate. 

“Aside from boneless, how ya’ feeling now?”

“I’m a bit nervous to answer that honestly, John,” she admitted, eyes fluttering. A dopey smile formed on her face, so he knew the honest answer was more good than bad. Hancock smirked to himself as she lifted a weak hand to his chest, fingering the ruffles blindly until she got a good grip and urged him down. There ain’t no way in hell she didn’t taste herself on his lips, but she kissed him just as deeply as before.

He could die like this and die happy, John realized clearly and suddenly. 

Eventually her parting and pressing kisses grew weak and slow until her wet lips merely lingered against his own; smiling, “Thank you, John...let me get some rest and I’ll get you back, okay?”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, peaches.” The sacrilegious image of her swallowing him down on her knees pervaded him all night after she murmured ‘I promise’ with a fleeting kiss. It didn’t take long for her to slip into sleep...but Hancock found himself awake with an aching cock like all the other times, except this time he could stroke himself firmly with her taste in his mouth and his eyes on her nearly naked body; all splayed out in slumber.

He came hard, but he was pretty sure he’d cum harder when she’d be the one sucking it out of him.

The morning couldn’t come quick enough...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you fo reading, commenting and leaving kudos. They mean a hell of a lot to me. That's it for what's already been written. Updates might not come as frequently, but we'll see. I'm enjoying writing this whenever I have the time. Leave me a comment if you have the time and a big thanks to everyone for getting this far with me.


	10. Chapter 10

With a blank mind, she laid awake, warm and comfortable if not a little grimy and sticky from the sweating and the leftover fluid and spit between her thighs. Hancock had the bridge of his nose pressed into the back of her neck, still sleeping. Every exhale he made heated her pleasantly. Against her stomach, she could feel his fingers twitch with aimless dreams, maybe. The uneven texture tickled, nothing like the rough drag when he’d had one of them inside her - this was almost as soft as butterfly kisses.

Gone too far now to turn back, she told herself as a jittery energy threatened to ruin her lazy morning. Why would she regret it anyways? Even if he didn’t love her like Nate told her he did it didn’t matter, somehow.

Nora absorbed the warmth of him, unable to stop her lips from curling. He was a hot wall at her back and the sickness and anxiety didn’t seem capable of breaking him down. The ultimate fortification, she figured, smiling wider in the buzzing silence. She didn’t dream all night, but somewhere between the thin line of awakening and awareness she could sense the playback of John’s mouth sliding up and down her clit with more urgency than most people showed at a safe haven in a gun battle, or a bottle of water in the desert...or that Nate ever showed her in the dark…

How did she feel afterward, John had asked her. Where did she even start? Maybe begin with admitting that the man who’d love her, whom she’d loved, never made her feel that way. Or that Nate had never came at her like a starving dog that still held his bites back for loving licks. John looked at her like he wanted to devour her and he did but not to the bone - just to the very core of her. No one had ever done that to her before and she knew he would - she’d seen it in his eyes many a time and she wanted it and when she asked he gave it to her without question.

Not even the mentats had ever made her feel so calm and peaceful…so fucking good.

At her back, she felt him stir as if he knew she was thinking about him. The stiff line of his cock had been resting under her rear, stuffed along the crease between ass and thigh for about as long as she’d been awake. Now that the prospect of doing to him what he did to her was here she felt that nervous tightness in her chest once again.

There was still so much left to do. 

She fingered the radio dial on her pipboy aimlessly, thinking on the journey ahead - find the courser, infiltrate The Institute, get Shaun back. It all seemed too much to accomplish. But here, in this bunker with Hancock, none of the future perils seemed real. Whether that was a good thing or not she wasn’t certain, but while it lasted she was adamant she’d enjoy it.

“Nora?” he sighed her sleep-scratchy name against the back of her neck. The hand John had draped over her stomach pressed firmly, tilting her backside into the hollow of his hips with a quiet groan. She shifted back daringly, relishing the extended, guttural sound that rumbled out of his throat. 

“Good morning,” she whispered back. John chuckled hotly along her skin.

“How's my tasty girl doing this morning?” he asked, thin lips moving on the nape of her neck. Fresh memories flooded her - of soft wet suckling sounds and toe-curling bliss. Her toes had curled. She smirked, she'd been right about that little detail then. 

“Better…” she admitted, “better than I'd have hope to and I've got you to thank for that, John.” 

She shifted, turned her head until his forehead was pressed against hers. Depthless eyes, lazy looking with old sleep smiled at her. Nora gave him a careful kiss, feeling her heart flutter when he returned it with all the tender eagerness of a lover. Was that what he was now? Or did the wasteland only provide friends that also enjoyed a good fuck now and then? It’d be easy to complicate it because that’s what the old world was for - complicating things that should have been simple. If he made her feel good; if he made her feel loved regardless of if he actually loved her, then what was the problem? 

There was none, she told herself as she opened her lips against his mouth, moaning softly as his tongue licked along the tip of hers. Hancock made her feel good. It was as easy as that.

The slow, aimless kisses didn’t stay that way for long. A soft bite to her lower lip was all the warning he gave her before John urged her carefully onto her back. Nora could feel a soft, nervous breath pass between their lips as Hancock ran a textured palm up the expanse of her stomach to the cotton cup of her bra; thumb sliding under the strap. One firm swipe over her nipple, through the material, made her gasp. The raw pleasure startled her for a moment; lips going slack underneath his own.

She hadn't been touched there since Shaun...

“C-careful,” she stuttered, feeling heat surge into her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was another mess to clean up - and they both needed this too much to get caught up in explanations or awkwardness. She could explain everything to him later. Now was meant to be enjoyed.

John grinned against her lips, gave her a rough kiss before dragging his front teeth down the slope of her jaw, licking and kissing and nipping wherever he pleased.

“Little sensitive, huh?” he teased; voice a dirty grind. He placed another kiss against her skin, this time between her breasts. “I can play gentle if ya’ need me too, peaches. Just say the word.” The moist heat of his tongue filtered past the cotton as he gave the stiff bud a long, firm lick. Nora shuddered, halfway through to a warning but a follow-up bite landed on her nipple, spiking her breast with a painful sort of pleasure.

“Hancock!” she fisted his dress shirt, pushing him back to catch sight of his smug expression. Panic rose into her throat at the mischievous glint in his eyes. 

“Guessin’ that was a bit too rough. Let me kiss it and make it better,” he promised, tongue pinched between his teeth like the dirty bastard he was. Nora blushed, much like she would have had this been the year of ‘72 in her freshman year of college...he had a habit of making her feel like a teenager too often.

“Hey, I didn't-” John began, eyes widening over her heaving chest.

She could feel the moisture leaking already. Abruptly, she pressed him to the side, pulling herself up with a tight hand over her breast; hiding as if it would help. Her heart was pounding. The embarrassment and arousal blended smoothly. Nora sucked in a breath, closed her eyes and let her head hang down, “I told you to be careful, Hancock.”

“Did I hurt you? It was just a nip of the teeth...I didn’t think-”

“I’m lactating,” she told him bluntly. There was no point in lying or omitting the truth anymore - though she wasn’t entirely convinced he hadn’t already figured it out awhile ago. It wasn’t hard to piece it all together...or maybe that was just her trying to impart the blame on him. She should have just told him when he’d agreed to tag along with her all the way out here. Besides, soon she’d be holding Shaun in her arms again and she didn’t want John to be standing behind her, confused and hurt at her dishonesty. 

“Hold the fort, sister...you're pregnant?” he asked - an unfamiliar tone of hurt in his question, something she’d noticed from others but never from him. Nora dared a looked up at him, eyes circled against his. When could she have become pregnant? The only times she'd been apart from him was definitely not enough time to enjoy that sort of activity.

“No, John,” she told him, watching intently as the ragged crease between his eyes lessened in relief, “My baby, Shaun. That’s who I’m looking for...how did you not know already?” 

How could he not have known? She’d confessed her husband had been murdered a long time ago, early on in their journey. Kellogg was dead. Who else did John think she’d have been looking for if not her child. He even touched the scar left over from Shaun's delivery last night. Her figure hadn’t exactly returned to its normal slim shape either…

There had been countless signs pointing to this conclusion, but Nora figured, Hancock wasn’t a detective. Why would he have been looking for clues anyhow?

John made a strange chuff of noise, like laughter but more self-deprecating, “Well, kinda hard to focus on the little details while I’m busy admirin’ how much your ass bounces when ya’ walk. Wasn’t too sure you weren’t a hallucination half the time.” 

She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing away the little smile that tried to crawl over her lips, but then she felt his fingers slide under her chin, pulling her gaze up to his again. Nora opened her eyes and found him sternly studying her, eyes open and black as the night sky. John gave her a hopeful smile as her eyes shifted wetly over his features - ruined perfection. 

“You gotta admit, you’re hot stuff, peaches. But I doubt that’s a good excuse for not paying more attention to what really matters, huh?”

Nora smiled despite herself, “If you’re apologizing there’s no need. I should have told you before we left Bunker Hill...it’s my fault I suppose.”

“Ain’t no way you’re the one to blame here. But,” she saw his smile stretch into a lascivious grin, “you can make it up to me by fulfilling a secret kink of mine.” He looked to and fro from her chest to her confused gaze several times before giving his lower lip a quick swipe with his tongue. He didn’t really mean...

Nora flushed, laughed and smacked his arm when he chuckled back, trying to pinch her under the arm. The tension shifted, smooth and easy, as she shoved him back over their joined sleeping bags. She grappling at his tickling fingers and managed, finally, after a minute of solid mocking wrestling, to pin his wrists back above his head. It didn’t last that way for long, though. Eventually, she was tempted back down, to his smirking mouth with a simple waggle of his brows. Ever the charmer, she reminded herself, kissing him softly - the feeling still so new and fresh and daring.

“So is that a no to getting a taste, then?” he muttered sloppily, still kissing her through the words.

“Wouldn’t you rather something else,” she pulled back, rolling her tongue tellingly against his ruined, lower lip. 

Somehow it didn’t seem strange kissing him, despite the texture of his skin, or the slightly tangy taste that was so at odds and different than what she expected. Nora had wondered a few times before last night exactly what the rest of him looked like...or what the rest of him tasted like. She’d felt his erection that day at The Slog and again in the early hours of the morning. A big guy down south, she remembered thinking, even if he was a little on the skinny side everywhere else...

John seemed too good to be real sometimes, so she could understand why John felt the same about her. Hallucinations, indeed. Last night, with the sweet lull of the mentats and the orgasm that was over two-hundred years due...it still felt like a dream. 

“Christ,” he groaned, “you can’t just tease a ghoul like that and not deliver.”

“Who said I was teasing?” she whispered, stroking her thumb down a particularly ragged scar on the side of his neck. The flirting was addicting, but Nora realized while she’d been waiting outside the shack in Bunker Hill; while she listened desperately as he masturbated in the bath, that she was close to done with the flirting. She knew then that her resolve wouldn’t last much longer, and she’d been right.

All through The Glowing Sea she'd snuck glances at him, tried to squint hard enough to see the inner workings of his mind and failing. In fact, the distractions she allowed him to present was what caused her sickness in the first place. It was hard to keep one eye on him and the other on the puddles of fluorescent green. It was no wonder her brief meeting with the mutated Virgil had been so one-sided. She’d been more focused on what Hancock was doing with his silky knife tricks against the wall than what the conversation had entailed.

That damn jutting rock, she mused. But perhaps that was a good thing in the end...it somehow lead to the events of last night after all.

“I ain’t gonna last long…” he confessed as her fingers rubbed along the hard bones in his wrists. Hancock looked as flushed as she figured a ghoul could when she lowered herself over his groin - the hard line fitting against her inner thigh like a hot stone. The sight of him now, with black, glassy eyes, an open panting mouth with a slight shine from her kisses made her bold. Nate had never made her feel so bold, she realized, then quickly pushed his ghost away. He was gone and never coming back and John held her eyes with his like he feared she'd slip into smoke...no one had ever looked at her like that before. 

“You don't need to last long,” Nora reassured him, watching his chest rise and fall, shaken and uneven. He nodded, chin hidden in the ruffles of his shirt and eyes half-lidded as he looked down between their bodies.

She heard him suck in a harsh breath as she released his hands by his head, dragging her fingers down his side until she brushed against the thin cotton flag cinching his waist. The knot came undone easily enough, leaving an open fold of fabric where the top button was supposed to be. A soft, shiny rash of scar tissue greeted her...no hair...just radiation burns and raised scars. 

It looked painful, but when she cut her eyes to his face she found him with his teeth in the corner of his lower lip, gushing out breaths through the opening of his nose; eye intent on her fingers.

She'd be lying if she said she wasn't nervous about what lay below the buttons of his pants - of what he looked like or smelt like or if he was as hung as her selfish mind imagined. A noise rumbled from John’s throat, something like the precursor of words that she didn't think she wanted to hear, so her fingers started suddenly and quickly at the buttons, exposing inches more until…

...she swallowed a gasp.

His cock slid out; flopped back onto his stomach and throbbed in tandem with a long, relieved groan, “...hell, I must still be dreamin’.”

No, she smirked, you're not. 

Nora watched his eyes roll back, throat working on a thick swallow as she reached down to run her thumbs down the side of his cock. Not too different from what she was used to, maybe a bit more damaged but without a doubt thicker and an inch or so longer than she'd ever seen in person. She supposed with a cock like this it wasn't hard for him to get laid, even as a ghoul; even with the nearly exposed veins beating with the rhythm of his heart. She fingered a thick root and felt it surge and pulse. Yea, she could see how he’d still be a rapscallion even looking as he did...

“You don’t gotta,” John rasped, pulling himself slowly up onto his elbows, tearing his eyes off her hands around him to her face, “it’s an ugly sight for even the not so fainthearted.” 

He smirked, self-deprecating again. Nora decided she didn’t want to see that on him anymore; ever again, so she set him with a heavy look and slid down between his spreads knees with a more noble goal than just getting him off. Nora could see the realization cross his face once she pushed her palms between his thighs, making room for what she was about to do. He looked much like the time he’d gotten shot - that painful wave of adrenaline painting each expression. For once, the famous Mayor Hancock seemed speechless. Under her hands she could feel his muscles twitch; could feel the energy, palpable and barely restrained. 

It was easy to see how having an effect like this one a man - no, on Hancock - could become addictive.

“John,” she sighed, putting as much of that old seduction into his name as possible before she slid her tongue out to swipe along the knock below the head of him. He tasted of smoke and sweat and despite the journey they had been on, he even smelt...good. Through the fog of realization, she barely heard the thunderous groan above her, going in for another long thick, tasting something salty and wet. Pre-cum, she recalled, swallowing the flavor.

“Damn, peaches,” he echoed in her ears.

She missed this - this intimacy. Nora spread her fingers out around the open seams of his pants, dug her nails in and swallowed him down as deep as she could. Yes, she missed feeling so close like this; realizing now how much she’d needed this.

“Ah, fuck,” he choked and shuddered, “...Nora...” 

She heard him made a ragged whine of noise just before his fingers began threading through her hair, brushing strands away from her cheeks and forehead furiously so he could, no doubt, watch her with better clarity. Knowing that, she gave a soft suck, dragging her lips back until her lips rested wetly on his sticky cockhead. That familiar tang of cum lingered on the back of her tongue; sour, salty and strong.

Black, hot eyes were watching her when she dared a lowered look up at him. With their gazes locked, she ran her tongue along the weeping slit teasingly and saw as his eyes narrowed. The constantly twitching fingers in her hair tightened, pulled not ungently and once more she opened her mouth around him and swallowed as he guided her down.

Hancock had been right, he didn’t last long, but the way his muscles quivered under her hands and the steady, fast beat of blood rushing through him told her that anyways.

His palm cupped the back of her head carefully while his other slap flat out on the floor, bracing himself as her lips stretched around his girth, tongue cupping him in the hot darkness of her mouth. Hancock came suddenly, hips jarring up and without warning a flood of cum filled her mouth. Half of it leaked out past her lips, coating her fingers.

“Fuck- fuck,” he panted, fingers wrapped painfully in her hair as the last spurt of cum leaked out onto her tongue. The apology was already in the air when she made the first gulp, getting most of it down without gagging.

“Shit, words can’t express how sorry I am..” 

Nora only barely heard him, pulling herself off his well-drained cock with strings of spit and cum still attaching them. That had been way messier than she’d thought it would be, but if it did anything - it sure seemed to shut down Johns apologies when he saw the sight of her, covered in him.

The web of her hand was still touching the base of him, and to her surprise, she felt him harden again. What an insatiable bastard, she thought and he stared openly at the perverse sight.

“-should have spit that out. You ain’t needin’ any more rads. I shoulda-”

“Stop talking, John,” she told him, wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand, noting the slight off-color hue of the thicker streaks of moisture. His cum, she realized. Might be that was the only drawback of being a ghoul in this situation, she figured. But really, despite the inevitable mess things like this caused, it didn’t taste bad...just a bit thicker than she had expected. More viscous, she thought, not knowing if that disgusted her or aroused her.

Her bare thighs were slippery, though...so maybe it was more arousing than anything.

Hancock stared at her intently, pulling in breaths through his parted mouth. As apologetic as he appeared, she could still see the effect of the blowjob on his features. Even the line of his shoulders seemed less stiff.

Nora gave him a moist smile, licking her lips for emphasis.

“Ya sure this ain’t some dream?” he asked her; tone low and bare. 

His thumb swiped along her chin, fingers curling at the back of her neck to bring her up into his lap. She came willingly, swallowing again just before Hancock leaned in to give her a kiss. Not many men would try for a sample after spilling inside one’s mouth. This - out of all the things since last night - made her stomach spike with pleasure. That he was still eager to kiss her like it was his first and only chance even with the heavy taste of his cum still on her tongue.

“I sure as fuck hope not,” she muttered to him before his tongue slid into her mouth, licking at the roof of her mouth. Vibrations from his pleased groan soaked into her head, making her feel dizzy and faint. Oh god, she wasn’t sure why but this...this…

“Hancock,” she moaned, separating from his hungry mouth, watching the frustrated expression on his face fade into confusion. “I know it’s bad timing, but we need to get moving…I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” he grinned, pulling their foreheads together with that firm grip still in her hair, “I just got a’ taste of the best high in the world, don’t waste apologies on this ugly mug. Besides, I’ll getcha back, peaches.”

Nora smiled as she licked her lips, tasting him all over again. He was warm under her palms as she stroked his ruffled chest, feeling his heart pounding. “Don’t make promises you won’t keep, John.”

“Oh,” he pronounced, showing her his teeth in a telling manner, “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, commenting and leaving kudos. The next chapter may be the last unless it ends up being a monster, in which case I might post them back to back. If you have time please leave a kudo or a comment. :)


	11. Chapter 11

The world went by like an indulgent trip - same as when John had been hanging around in his office back in Goodneighbor those first few weeks after meeting her, damning and relishing his rediscovered sex drive. Now, during the nights he was free to squeeze her curves to his heart’s content. She even giggled when he whispered his filth in her ear on that one rainy evening. In the darkness - illuminated by a candle or a lantern - he’d sweet talk her into foolin’ around until they were both sticky and panting, kissing her long enough he thought he might go under. 

He’d suck her sweetness dry and pretend when she'd settle between his legs, that he wasn't hoping she'd do the same to him in turn. Those were the best hours of his life, he admitted - not that his life had ever been filled with much pleasure that wasn’t chem-induced or dishonest.

Her kisses were honest, though - the way she snuck her hands between their bodies to wrap smooth fingers around the hard, mangled flesh he called his cock, that too was honest. Same as the moans he managed to get out of her. All of the sounds she made when he had his mouth sealed over her - his fingers spread inside of her - each one she gave him was genuine. That alone was a welcome change in his life.

The morning they killed that courser, he’d pulled her back into him after she’d slipped her suit back on. Soft, malleable flesh slid into the hard lines of his body while he did his best to remind her how lucky he was to have her; how much she meant to him. Nora hadn’t said much in return, but the way she’d hugged his arms around her middle said enough to pacify him.

Hancock didn’t pretend to know about the pre-war customs she was used to, but she was a forthright woman. As sincere as her ass was perfection and if he wasn’t doing something right he felt sure she’d let him know. Either she was a unique case from her time or the women before the war weren’t as superficial as he’d figured. 

Before they left for the CIT ruins, she’d kissed him without a word and smiled. That to him was better than any vocal expression could have been. Words were fleeting anyway - words could lie and hurt, but the way she kissed him, that was hard to fake.

The stakes were too high to let his eyes wander to her backside as he walked in her shadow through the ruins. Might have been why she’d spent so much time between his thighs the night before, fulfilling one of his filthier fantasies with the soft, supple flesh of her bare breasts...slidin’ up and down...

...that shit alone was gonna get him through the next hundred or so years of his life if he made it that far. 

Wasn't anything his doped brain could imagine half as hot as the sight of blushing Nora on her knees with the head of his spent cock still leakin’ between her breasts. 

Each blip on the radio came faster than the last and John watched the lines of her body grow stiff the closer they got. 

He pressed away another recollection of nights past, scanning the horizon instead. 

The place they found was covered in Gunners, each of them shouting orders over the other, too loud to notice them sneaking in with guns loaded and grenades primed. Gunners as a whole were never fun to deal with but these ones were spooked; unpredictable. 

Goodneighbor had their fair share of tense meetings with them. Hancock didn't care to recall those unpleasant meetings, having to remind whichever cocksucker in charge at the time about the territory borders and the like. 

They seemed more disorganized than John would have figured. Almost as though they'd lost a leader in the chaos, he thought, thinking maybe they could lower their guard just before a missile ruptured above their heads. The ceiling shook, dust and heavier particles coming loose.

Nora looked at him, pupils blown wide before crouching down by a broken door. 

He followed suit, shoving a shoulder up on the wall beside her. She reeked of gunpowder, sweat and that familiar sweetness that was just her and her alone. With the adrenaline rushing like lust in his veins he nearly tried to throw her down and make her come undone right here; right now. Didn’t help his resolve any when she leaned in, close enough he could grab her by the neck and kiss her, to whisper to him, “They’re bringing out the big guns, how many grenades do you have left?”

Hancock swallowed a solid lump in his throat before throwing the side of his frock open, showing her the arsenal with a put-on smirk, “Enough to make you wet.”

Nora matched his expression, eyeing him up and down before gesturing to the doorway, “Well then...follow me, handsome.”

For some reason his own grin mimicked on her face just made his dick a bit hard. “Anything you say, peaches.”

It was a group of three with the missile launcher. One of them supplying the ammunition, another trying to smack a fizzling radio on his thigh while the third sweated under the weight of the launcher. They were trying to call in backup, but failing and with a finger to her lips, he felt Nora pluck two grenades from his coat - the touch searing. 

She whispered something low and ominous before skipping the pinless betties under the Gunners boot soles.

John grabbed her hard around the waist, pulling them both back. He flattened them behind a desk in the back room, their bodies sliding into cover just as the two-blast explosion sounded. 

It was dead silence after the rain of debris finished pinging off the steel floors. All he could hear was Nora's curious hum as she pulled her face out from the frills of his chest; a hand planted on her stomach. 

They reached the top floor minutes later. A group of cornered, spitting Gunners were huddled on the floor, under the mercy of a figure dressed all in black. 

A pair of equally dark, lightless shades turned on them. 

Hancock noted a figured trapped behind a screen of metal, looking out pleadingly from a small porthole in the locked door. So that’s what all this mess was for? - one self-aware synth that just wanted freedom. 

The trouble with power, Hancock knew, was it made you feel required to stomp over the regular folks; folks just trying to survive. John hated this fucking thing standing before them, expressionless and hollow. Hated it as much as he hated his brother...

“Zeta Five-Three Kilo,” Nora seethed immediately. No negotiations - no begging or questions. 

John’s eyes creased, momentarily confused before he watched the tall, synthetic crumple to the floor like a lifeless ragdoll. 

Dead. Deactivated. Whatever the proper word was, it wasn’t movin’ and Nora was striding past the restrained Gunners shouting at her to free them, beelining for the locked door where the trapped synth had her palms pressed to the glass.

‘Please!’ he could hear the girl pleading through the glass.

The Gunners on the floor were begging to be freed in a similar fashion, one of them so bloody and beaten John wasn’t sure it was a man or a woman…

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” Nora told the synth. 

The sound of her fingers slipping over the keys of the terminal echoed around the room. John hung back, watching the scene play out, keeping most of his attention on the Gunners that were lookin’ ready to find another means of freedom. It didn’t take much but a chugging cock of his shotgun to make them go still. 

One of them threw a spit-clogged slur his way, but John wasn’t hurt by any of that bullshit anymore...and even as a ghoul Hancock was pretty sure the Gunner was uglier than him by a long shot.

“Oh god! He was going to take me back,” the synth - no the young girl - sobbed, stretched her arms out and latched poor startled Nora into a tight hug. 

“They were going to wipe everything!”

John watched as Nora soothed the girl; stroking her back like a mother would. It was hard to imagine her having a baby. She didn’t show any of the physical signs of being a new mother, as far as he knew, and she was brutal when she needed to be. Not exactly a soft hearted woman when it came to necessary violence. But right now it was easy to see, maybe impossible not to. 

John wasn’t sure how that made him feel. But he was impressed by her, always, just a bit more than usual right now.

They left the Gunners to their fates. She wasn’t about to kill a bunch of tied up men begging like sniveling kids. But John didn’t like the idea of letting them go, either.

“Leave ‘em. Let the commonwealth decided what to do to ‘em,” he suggested when she looked to him for advice. 

Didn’t seem like her initial decision was much different than his since he could make out the relieved agreement in her eyes before she even nodded.

With the wide-eyed synth girl in tow, they backtracked to Hangman's Alley to figure out what to do with her. Neither of them could leave her nor could they let her off on her own after something as traumatic as what no doubt happened to her. 

“It's a small settlement in the old city,” Nora told the girl, Jenny, he recalled her saying was her chosen name, “it's close to The Railroad...and Diamond City and Goodneighbor. We’ll help you wherever you decide to go. You can even stay there if you'd like.”

Yeah, there weren't many women like Nora. Weren't many people like her, period. 

Throwing in with her had to have been the best decision of his life. Sometimes he'd get thinkin’ about how close he'd been to spending his extended life in that office of his, makin’ deals and shankin’ assholes, and he'd get nervous. Might be that there was a John in some other plane of existence that was still sitting on that couch of his...shooting chems and drowning in booze. That sad man might never know the happiness he knew now. 

Bad move that would have been. Now he was saving damsels and fighting off the boogeyman with the most incredible dame he'd ever met. This John Hancock was a lucky bastard.

Nora slowed her steps until her elbow brushed beside his own, her rifle swaying over the back of her shoulder, “Hancock’s the mayor of Goodneighbor, we could set you up at the Rexford Hotel, maybe.”

“I just want to be free,” Jenny told them both, watching the cracks in the cement bridge they began crossing. John found himself smiling, catching a curious look from the girl briefly before she looked back to the horizon nervously. No way he'd let himself take that personally. He knew the drill, even among synths. 

“Aim of the people,” he rasped, watching Nora glance at him out the corner of his eye, “livin’ on their own terms. No better way to be.”

“Agreed,” Nora muttered; something like admiration in her voice. 

John cast her a glance, finding her smilingly slightly, eyes ahead though he knew she knew he was staring at her. 

There was a crease of mischief in the corner of her eye, and he wanted to peel her open and find out what that might promise for him later. And there his mind went again, bending her down on the workbench maybe, caressing her supple ass cheeks...giving her a spank for good measure. 

Hangman’s Alley was busy. The small space was packed full of activity, just as it was that morning when they'd left. The sun had already dipped down past the buildings now, leaving the buzzing lights to illuminate the dark space. 

Hancock tipped his tricorn to Smiling Larry, who by the looks of it was making something filled with carrots and stag for dinner over a half rusted stovetop in the corner. The guy had the same middle-aged woman by his side as that morning, helping chop up something leafy and green. 

“Hey, Hancock,” Nora’s voice called. 

He spotted her by the wooden stairs, leading up to the first stilted floor where most of the settlers rested their feet for the day. 

She curled her finger for him, pulling him towards her on a hidden string like a damn pooch on a leash.

“What's up, sunshine?”

“Would you mind grabbing that thing for me...from my room,” she asked, eyes open and all too telling. So much for being subtle, he thought, grinning knowingly despite the stiff look she gave him for it.

“Yea, sure. I'll get that ‘thing’ for ya.” And he would - of course he would - but he took his sweet ass time lighting up a much-needed smoke as she stood there, briefly wondering if she needed to elaborate for him or not by the looks of it. 

Honestly, he'd love to hear her say she wanted him waitin’ for her on her bed when she was done with the girl - wanted to hear her say it in front of everyone who cared to hear. But wishful thinking only lead to disappointment and there was no reason to feel that in the slightest when she was gonna be fumblin’ with him in bed soon enough. 

That night they watched the stars from the roof of the storied shack, laying side by side; her head tilted so her cheek was pressed into his shoulder. His stomach was still a’ flutter from the orgasm she pulled outta him half an hour earlier. 

Still reeling in the afterglow muddled with chems...

“They haven't changed at all,” she whispered after a long bout of silence. 

He was at the peak of his jet high, waiting for the mentats they shared ten minutes ago to kick in as she blindly groped for his hand at his hip. It still startled him to realize she wanted him close to her like this…somehow her holding his hand, something so innocent, jarred him more than her lips stretching around his dick did.

“What hasn't changed?” he asked before rolling his head to the side to bury his ruined nose into the free strands of her hair. A whiff of sex filled his senses, throwing him back into a needy puddle while she stretched alongside him.

“The stars,” her words laid open so much emotion that John wasn't sure what to say, so thankfully she explained herself, “nothing else is like it used to be. Even the sun and the moon seem...off somehow, but the stars - the stars still look the same.”

“Guessin’ the bombs didn’t stretch that far, huh?” he teased, threading their fingers together. 

The nearly blemish free skin of her fingers against the radiation tear of his own was an odd thing to look at. Wasn’t natural. 

Somethin’ as perfect as her was wasted on a barren ghoul like him. She should be populating the wasteland with the old world again, not letting him spill his jizz in her mouth just for her to gulp it down and kiss him as if she liked it. 

Nora did, though. 

She liked him, and for whatever reason she liked indulging him just as much as she seemed to like what his tongue could do to her.

Just thinking about it, fuck. Now he was really hard up again. Stiff as a steel beam and it didn’t take a poindexter to know Nora was in a snuggle up and relax mood. Soon the mentats would hit her and she’d be ridin’ her soft high right along with him - too relaxed to indulge him again. 

Hancock could live with that, though, he figured. Hell, they could fool around like they were, the rest of their lives and he’d be a fool to demand anymore.

Still...he wanted to slide his cock between her thighs, push himself deep as could be and give her a real good ride more than he liked to admit. 

Just enjoy what you got, he told himself, fishing a smoke out of his front pocket as she watched the stars in silence. 

“I got a reply from Dr. Amari already,” she informed him - the edge of that ‘tat high in every word, “she said what you said...talk to The Railroad.”

“If anyone knows what to do with that chip it’d be them,” he agreed, running his thumb over the soft skin of her knuckles.

“Jenny said she wanted to stay here - I still think she’d be better off with Desdemona, but it’s not my decision.”

“Lettin’ the girl make her own choice, good or bad, is what it’s all about. The point is she can choose now. Thanks to you.”

Nora shifted, nuzzling into his shoulder as her arm snaked around his middle; holding him close, “Not sure I’d have made it half as far without you, John...not saying I’d have died, but I might not have found enough courage to do things the same way.”

“Wouldn’t give me too much credit,” he teased, turning his body into her enough, he could land a firm pinch on her backside, “my motives weren’t too pure most’ave the time.”

She smiled, rolling into him with a delicate sigh. 

Moments like this, John realized he loved her. Not a single girl he’d enjoyed holding like this as much as he did fucking...or whatever it was she wanted to call what they were doing. All the other sloppy moments she gave him were just bonuses. This, right here - this was what he needed. Just this.

The next two weeks were trying times. Not particularly dangerous in that most of their routes were cleared out, but long and tedious. The Railroad was as he figured - a bunch ah’ tight asses with a good cause to their names. John had nothing against them of course. He’d turned a blind eye to them on the daily unless something didn’t smell right, which it rarely did when they were involved. Good folks just trying to help, but damn were they ready to take advantage of a woman with a big heart. 

Nora left with promises he knew she’d keep even if it killed her and a decrypted chip, along with a rough set of instructions with what to do with the damn thing.

One thing at a time, he told her when she wanted to head southwest to the sea again right after stepping outside the subways. Through many promises and bribery, he finally managed to turn her east. 

If anyone deserved a drink it was Nora. 

“So,” he asked her as they stepped back into his haunt; Goodneighbor greeting them with neon lights and the beginning of a thunderstorm falling from the black morning sky, “back to the mutant after some drinks and entertainment?”

“It looks that way,” she didn’t sound happy about it, but then again if he got that sick from radiation anymore he’d feel a little green about another trip as well, literally. But that worryin’ was for another day. Tomorrow they’d go over the details and the dangers. Tonight they’d enjoy themselves on him for a change and maybe he could get rid of some of that tension. A hot bath and a good tonguing ought to turn that sour frown upside down. 

The woman standing beside him under the slight pitter-patter of rain was the same, yet completely unfamiliar from the one he’d met that one evening nearly five months ago. 

Could be Nora had changed, but John knew deep down it was really him that wasn’t the same. Her body was slick; perfect, but that little shimmer in her eyes as she turned, smiling - that drew him in like a damned moth to an open flame. The chems weren’t on the top of the list for things that’d bring Ol’ Hancock down in the end. It was her. Nora was going to be the death of him and that was alright in his book.

Fahrenheit managed to catch up with him in the back room of the Third Rail with Nora’s head in his lap; the glassy sheen of a mentat high over her eyes. Countin’ the stains on the ceiling, he figured. 

John turned to catch Fahrenheit running her eyes over the sight of them both, giving nothing away behind her stonewalled face. Didn’t really matter what she thought, but John still wanted her approval for some reason. No helpin’ that, he grinned.

“What can I do ya, Fee?”

Her dirty face pinched in an expression of disgust, “You can start by telling Magnolia to keep her nose out of town business.”

“That woman’ll listen to you better than me,” John slurred and leaned back, sighing as Nora’s head shifted, putting light pressure over his groin. If she kept that up he’d be pokin’ the back of her head soon enough. But the little sly smile on her lips, as he looked down, told him that could have been part of the plan.

“What’s that suppose to mean?” Fahrenheit asked, sounding suspiciously strange.

“You know what it means. I ain’t gonna spell it out for you. Speakin’ of business, though,” he toyed with a loose strand of Nora’s hair, watching her blink lazy and sweet, “don’t wait up. I’ll be by the office in the mornin’ and not ah’ second earlier.” 

Fahrenheit sneered, but Hancock heard her mumble something resembling a ‘fine’ before the door slammed behind her. Nora barely shifted against the loud sound - too far gone for any semblance of a jump.

John enjoyed her like this, even if her mind was a bit halved on a good high. She needed to chill as often as she could afford. Might be because she was born in the old world that his made her so fucked in the head at times. John couldn’t blame her. She was too good for this place. Too good for him by a long shot, yet here she was, rolling in his lap with a wide easy smile on her face.

“If I fall asleep I’ll wake up, right?” she voiced; muffled words leaking against his groin. John could feel the heat of her breath through the fabric of his pants, sinking like a dense fog.

“Course you will, peaches. You think I’d let ya’ walk out on me when we’re so close to the finish line?”

“No...I just feel like I weigh a metric ton right now. How strong were those things…?”

John shrugged, watching her eyes widened in mock fear before the facade crumbled into a fit of wet giggles. 

She fingered his hip as she turned her nose into his thigh while the burst of laughter subsided. All the wiggling was setting his nerves on fire. He was uncomfortably sober as she twisted and turned and dug herself deeper into him; his cock going as hard as he knew it would. Some ghouls would kill to be able to get it up again...and here he was about ready to damn it until her palms slid off his hip to the clasp on his pants.

Shit...he groaned, wondering if this was appropriate while he was right minded compared to the slush he’d helped make of hers.

“Nora, sweetheart,” he tried, watching her kiss his clothed stomach softly; wrist flexing and snapping as she worked on exposing him. John made another attempt, “Not sure you outta’ put anything in your mouth when you’re this fucked up.”

The thick air hit his cock as she tugged it free. The side of it’s mangled weight leaned against the seam of her lips where a coy smirk curved along the beating flesh.

“Who said anything about my mouth?” 

Nora gave the leaking head of his cock a farewell kiss and John was pretty sure she was about to leave him high and dry before she braced a hand on his shoulder and straddled him.

The light, airy dress she’d slipped into earlier that evening rode up her thighs as they spread around him. He was relatively confused for about half a second until a wet, soft heat pressed against the underside of his dick…

Instinctively his palms grabbed her hips, slid around to her ass and plucked himself two handfuls of her as the wind gushed outta’ his lungs.

“You been sans panties this whole night?” he rasped; a thick lump stuck in his throat. 

Nora nodded, looking soberer than he'd thought she was; eyes shifting around his expression. John hoped he didn’t look as shell-shocked as he felt. It wasn’t every day a woman - let alone someone like her - pressed their tasty cunt against his dick...not that he was complainin’.

“We’re hidden away right now, John. I don’t even care that the door isn’t locked...and, don’t lie to me, when you said drinks and relaxation you didn't just mean the booze and chems.”

Hancock swallowed, “Wasn’t thinkin’ you’d be up for anything but some foolin’ around.” That was true. In fact, he’d come to terms with just the fumblings in the dark and realized it was more than he’d ever expected or deserved. Now this? What did he do now? Nora wasn’t just someone to fuck and shake hands in farewell with afterward. 

Fucking was all he knew in the end unless you wanted to throw in his impeccable oral skills as well - which he did back in the day.

“If you don’t want to it’s fine, just say so,” she whispered, resting her chin on his shoulder as she hugged him loosely around the neck; her hot snatch sealed against him. 

Who would have thought he’d end up the nervous one, but to be fair those ‘tats he gave her were strong. If he’d had a mind to pop a few himself he’d feel nothing but that smooth, secure pleasure she was sucked up with now. Nora was warm and heavy against him, and nothin’ but her mattered. 

Hancock gave her rear end a soft smack through her dress, just enough to make her jerk a little - the slippery flesh between her legs sliding against him just enough to stir the growing need that had already been brewing since that rainy August so fuckin’ long ago.

“You know how often I’ve beaten off to this exact scenario?”

Nora’s lips stretched against his neck, “A few times at least...I've heard you thinkin’ about something naughty...”

John pinched her ass and swallowed down the pang of pleasure the startled little sound she made gave him, “Cheeky girl. Just you wait. After this? I'm gonna show you all the ways in which I've thought about bustin’ that new age cherry of yours.”

More ways than he had time for, he thought, running his palm under the hem of her dress, caressing soft bare skin; generous and warm. Never had he seen or felt an ass quite like hers, and more than once she’d allowed him the privilege of shoving his face between it, much to her red-faced embarrassment. Now her hips were rocking slowly in short circles, staining the open seam of his pants.

“John,” she moaned, lifting against his shoulders. 

His hands slid underneath her, wrapping one hand around his pulsing cock. 

No sweet words flowed out of her mouth, just one long, loud moan as she found his cockhead with a wet press and sat herself down on him. The tightness he found inside her was almost enough to hurt; more than enough to take his breath away and leave him panting and glassy eyed and partly delirious despite the lack of chems runnin’ in his blood.

“Christ!” he hissed, dug his fingers into her ass and bucked upwards; hard. 

Nora yelped, held still and shook her head, “Easy, John...it’s been awhile.”

“Shit, my bad,” he apologized, only barely realizing what he'd done. 

She was plastered against him as much as she could be with all the clothes still between them, shivering under his hands.

Awhile, indeed, he thought blindly. She was tight enough to unman him, maybe...if she wanted. Being frozen and thawed out and unfucked for awhile apparently didn’t prepare a body for something like this. Not even being a new mom loosened her up any it seemed. 

Nora sighed, thumbing the side of his neck. Her insides clenched tight, making him suck in a sharp breath. 

“Us ghouls are known to lose things you know...startin’ to think you’re trying to mutilate me,” he joked breathlessly or tried to. Anything to keep himself on the sofa and not start throwing himself furiously up into her until she started screamin’. 

Nora didn’t need that and although he was sure she wasn’t hurting right now - the mentats doing their job in that respect - didn’t mean she’d be alright in the morning if he wasn’t too careful. Turning ghoul hadn’t made his dick any smaller, and before the whole radiation thing, he’d accidently hurt women with a lot more self-control than he had now. 

Instinctively, it was hard keeping still, but she was way overdressed for this and that - that he could distract himself with. Nora leaned back carefully as he started fingering the button at her collar. Her cheeks were ruddy and something like tears was stuck in her lashes, but her lips curled; smiling as he parted her dress down the middle.

“I guess we got a little eager,” she admitted, lifting her arms as he bunched the skirts of her dress over her ribs, pulling the black garment off her head. Nothing else under that dress then...he licked his teeth at the sight.

“Ain’t gonna find any complaints here, peaches,” he smirked, stroking the side of his rough thumb over her nipple, watching it tighten into a hard bud. “Just don’t want you hurtin’ yourself by letting me get away with playin’ rough.”

She nodded, sighing as he plucked her nipples, workin’ on his buttons and undershirt with unstable fingers. The way her chest heaved and blushed up to her cheeks made his heart pound. The impossibly tight flesh searing around his cock was making his head spin and just the fact that he had to wait for her was near killin’ him. 

John wouldn’t have it any other way, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t counting the seconds until she was done pushing his frock open so he could seize her hips and get her bursting in his lap. He wasn’t too pleased when she tugged his vest down his arms, nor when she urged him out of his undershirt either. 

Vulnerable, came to mind. He felt naked and not in a normal way. 

“Don’t hide from me,” her voice whispered. 

Hancock hadn’t realized he’d lowered his gaze until she was cupping the sides of his face to bring him in for an open-mouthed kiss. 

This woman...too fuckin’ perfect for him. 

Nora moaned, sucked at his tongue when he touched it to hers and proceeded to melt underneath her. He felt her warm, smooth palms - almost unreal - slip over his jaw to press against his chest. 

He groaned and her hips gave a gentle rock forward.

Dull, delicious pleasure filled his stomach. It soothed down his thighs and curled his toes in his boots. 

Her lips sealed and opened sloppily along his, pelvis grinding down in his lap. The tight, hot walls inside her dragged around his cock, sending sweet fire into his groin. Nora had never not given him the best high of his life, but this was more than he could have dreamt of on his best trip. 

Only pleasure he’d ever expected in life came from a bottle, or a needle or a shooter of acrid jet. Now it was Nora and it was better than anything else in the world. Better than every spice of chem mixed, heated, liquefied and shot straight into his heart…

Hancock groaned - a ragged guttural sound as Nora nipped the tough flesh of his lower lip, gasping his name, “John…”

Her forehead slid against his own, eyes wet and shiny and open while her hips rolled back and forth like lazy waves on the shore. 

John swallowed and stared, “You feelin’ this too?” he asked. She nodded, smooth temple against the uneven scratch of his own. Yeah, something more than sex, he realized.

“I’m so close,” she whispered; breathy and almost matter of fact if it wasn’t for how a strangled moan followed her admission. Her hips jerked - the hypnotic rhythm severed as her back bowed; thighs tightening around his hips, “...you want to go faster, John?”

“Please,” he admitted and begged. 

She sucked in a breath as he hefted her against him, soft breasts squashed against his chest, stomach trembling against his own. Hot sweaty skin, so smooth and slick melted and slid against his body as his hips bucked up. 

Nora gasped, held on tight and let him set the pace.

He felt her come after a few swift thrusts of his hips - the couch cushions squeaking under the motions. 

It was a subtle flutter of heat around his cock, then her nails dug into his neck and her lips opened against his jaw in a silent scream and there - right then she went tighter and hotter and...fuckin’ hell…

Nora’s arms were suffocating but he was already choking on the pleasure - already bruising her ass with the way his fingers were dug up in her. 

John was already fucking up into her hard and fast, feeling her breasts bouncing against his; nipples hard and no doubt raw by now. She was gonna be sore, he managed to realize, somewhere between trying to reach some impossible speed and depth and keep himself from going under as his mind started to fade out. But fuck, it felt so good. 

Nora’s arms let up at the last second, just before the black started to creep around the side of his vision. He was only vaguely aware of her reaching between them, sneaking a hand between her thighs to that delicious bundle of nerves while he fucked and gasped and swallowed as much damn air as he could.

He came right then as the oxygen swam back into his burning muscles - a surge of bliss popping in his groin. 

A few final thrusts, his feet flat on the floor, and the afterglow started setting in. John’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and there he found perfect emptiness. 

The noises from the bar flooded back in slow and fuzzy.

A soft moan filtered in there, past the clog of pure relaxation in his ears. Nora was watching him; eyes half closed, still in his lap with a firm finger on her clit, swirling it just the way he liked to. 

His cock twitched, leaking a final drop inside her at the sight - of her body, slick with sweat and shining under the lantern light, all soft oranges and yellows and hard shadows. 

Perfection. 

How could she be so perfect on the inside and still look like she came right outta some prewar magazine? 

“That’s it, Nora…let me feel your cunt stranglein’ me again,” he rasped, squeezing her ass at the sight. 

Nora shivered and gasped, going flush like a hard fever. 

Talkin’ dirty worked the last time he’d shoved his hand down her pants. Without the soft tracing of his tongue, she needed another level to get her there. Some foul words worked wonders…“Better make it feel real fuckin’ good...or I’ll have to show ya how it’s done…pinch that little button-”

She swallowed audibly, face pinching, “Oh…fuck!” and then she came again just like that; her insides milking his softening cock as if she could pull any more out him. As if he wasn’t already spent…drained and boneless…

“Fuck is right,” he rasped, smoothing his palms around her hips and ass, savoring the aftermath of the best fuck of his life. Didn’t even last all that long, yet he felt like they’d been here for hours, just sinking into each other like this. After a while she sat up, groaning quietly as his soft cock slipped out of her; warm cum staining his pants. Too full of him even now.

Damn. 

Nora chuckled, breathless and short, before falling over on the couch, her knees bent over his lap.

She gave him a calculating look before giggling again. What a beautiful damn sound that was. John had often wondered if she did these things often before the war - if only in moments like this, or when she was high, did he see the real Nora that she used to be all the time. Guessin’ that didn’t really matter dwelling on when she managed just fine, somehow.   
Hancock took in another lungful of air, feeling his legs ache from having braced himself underneath her. Her stomach was hollowed, ribs outlined and breasts spilling up as her chin went into her chest; grinning and red. He watched her wipe away the sweat from her brow.

“Wonder what people say now,” she whispered, looking, suddenly, a little less carefree and more withdrawn. Bad look for someone that just did what they did to him. 

“My experience?” he put a palm over her knee, rubbing the ball softly, “lots of excuses and people forgettin’ where they left their coat. If I was lucky maybe ah' round two.”

Nora smiled sadly, “Well, I’m not leaving and I won’t give you any excuses…”

John slid his hand up her thigh, moving her legs just enough so he could lean over her, “Now that that’s squared away, I’m wonderin’ if I’m lucky.” He smirked as her eyes lifted away from that afterglow; widening. Might be he was pushin’ his luck, but in this world, there were no guarantees. Could be he’d die tomorrow...had to get his fill of her as much as he could, if she’d be so inclined of course.

In all fairness, he didn’t expect much more than a little slap or maybe a dismissive chuckle, but Nora was full of surprises.

“Go shallow this time, alright?” she whispered, spreading her thighs around his knees, arching her back...grabbing at his bare shoulder, “you could kill someone with that thing.”

Yeah, Hancock knew, but it was her that was gonna kill him one of these days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who commented, left kudos and read this chapter. All this interest makes me that more excited to sit down a get typing. One more chapter to go, which should be up shortly. Leave a comment if you have the time and as always, please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors you might see. :D


	12. Chapter 12

Nora was pretty sure they’d attracted a few eavesdroppers outside the door while John was just shy of giving her a fourth orgasm.

Despite his ragged grunts and groans - each sound urging her closer to that feeling - she was sure the scuffling behind the door were people eager for a snippet of what was going on in Mayor Hancock’s private back room. Nothing innocent, of that she was sure they knew...

She watched the door unevenly as John’s hips smacked into her backside over and over and over. Each forward motion stretching her body to its limits. The sound of skin slapping must have been enough to alert anyone with ears...the moans would have pulled in the rest. Hancock was not a quiet lover.

Somehow, that idea of people’s ears glued to the door thrilled her. 

After she came with her legs spread around his hips, feeling once again loose and limber and able to do anything, she’d rolled over with a sloppy grin. Something about the sound he made - between a wheeze and a curse - at the prospect of fucking her this way, made it more than worth the first uncomfortable thrusts. He could get deeper this way...deep enough that it hurt, but the pain wasn’t the typical kind. The pain wasn’t like scuffing an elbow or taking a punch - it was addictive and gratifying...plus it came with that thick pleasure she’d only ever felt tonight and that was worth any amount of discomfort.

“Got us some company,” John growled behind her.

Normally the idea of that would curb any arousal or need of him, but she was too close to care and maybe the idea of being spied on made it feel better. John was turning her into an exhibitionist. Instead of curling away she shoved herself back, baring her teeth and relishing the crippling groan from his throat. 

He planted a mangled hand by her own on the armrest before she felt his mouth on her naked shoulder, kissing and licking and biting and grunting and...yess...that gave her the final push. She was flying after that; nose pressed into the musky armrest, stomach tense and back bowed.

“Already?” John teased despite how desperate he himself sounded, “I could bend you over the balcony...if ya’ like the audience so much. Could snap my fingers...you just,” he groaned, “just say the word.”

She’d have told him to be quiet but his hips slowed as she swam through the pleasure, sighing and moaning and curling her fingers into the couch. She wondered if all the girls he’d brought back to this room for a good time felt like this.

No, she wanted to say, but his hand squeezed the meat of her rear end, silencing her thoughts.

Normally she never had more than one orgasm, if she was ever so inclined to have one before knowing Hancock, now one never seemed enough, and one never satisfied him either - one of hers that is. It wasn’t surprising when she felt him go deeper, slowing down, changing the angle of his thrusts to push and pull along the most sensitive parts of her.

It wasn’t all that shocking when she felt him reach underneath her either, pressing two fingers to her swollen clit, eager to rip another one out of her. 

“Goddamnit, Hancock…” she sobbed, almost wanting to push him away, but that sharp jolt of intensity faded into another build up with the swipe of his fingers. The world went a bit black after that - just a mess of bliss and heaviness. She came again less than a minute after the last one, slumping down like the dead as she felt him smack his hips into her ruthlessly. Eager for his own release. The flesh of her ass sung with itching pain from the rough friction, but the warm burning only added to the pleasure and when John finally came again, it was just that much better.

She felt his forehead heavy on her spine; his hot breath making her skin sweat, “Get me...a vial of psycho...and we could do this all night, Nora.”

Like she could handle anymore, she mused, groaning, “It’s already been two hours…” 

It might have been only an hour and some change, but time felt like they’d thrown it into first gear. If her body could have handled more than five fucking orgasms she might have pushed him back on the couch and rode him just like this; his eyes on her back and his hands with nowhere else to hold but the ass he seemed to love so much.

But she wasn’t a teenager anymore and her eyes were already closing.

John kissed between her shoulder blades, “Kinda insulting you think I couldn’t go for another two. Gotta make up for lost time, peaches...and I’ve waited a long time for you.”

Nora looked back at the door, blurry with exhaustion. Somewhere in her mind, she felt she knew he meant more than the time since they’d met. Might be he meant waiting his whole life for her, but she bit her tongue before she could confess anything too sappy. No one said ‘love’ in this world after all. Instead, she smiled and whispered, “I’ve waited awhile for you too.”

As much as she wanted to fall asleep there, John helped her back into her dress and shoes after convincing her they’d sleep better in his bed. 

A few patrons were hanging out by the door, trying to look inconspicuous but John blew that out of the water by winking and tipping his hat to just about everyone that bothered to look. She did her best to walk evenly, especially with all the eyes on her but with the mentats still in her system in was near impossible to feel anxious about it, even if her brain tried it’s best. Those several full-bodied orgasms John gave her didn’t hurt her chill either.

“There ya’ go, sweetheart,” he hushed her once they were back in his office, having snuck by a smoking Fahrenheit, and ignoring the knowing looks from the Neighborhood Watch. 

Hancock kicked his boots off, threw his frock over the couch and tossed himself on the bed next to her - the springs squeaking happily as he snuggled her up against his warmth.

She slept easy that night and long into the morning. But even though John had changed her life, he didn't change what she had to do or how she had to do it. It didn't matter that when she woke up a part of her wanted to forget about her baby boy. That selfish part of her wanted to stay here forever with John...just living and laughing and fucking. But that wasn't meant to be.

In the morning she kissed him after they'd finished up what business they had, knowing full well the future was just as uncharted as those first few months after the thaw.

Nora took his hand and off they went. Into the unknown just like all the other times. It felt different this time, though. She walked closer beside him now, looked back at him more often; thought more on his reaction and approval than she ever had. Sex did that - no, love did that, but that wasn't something she ought to focus on. 

The Glowing Sea brought more pain and exhaustion, more unanswered questions and doubt. 

They found themselves at one of the more rundown places she'd claimed, Sunshine Tidings. Only a few settlers and one dopey robot inhabited the place, yet Nora saw a new face when she stepped over the hill. 

A little boy…

“Hey, you wanna go take a breather before we shoot the shit?” Hancock asked her; a supportive hand on her lower back as she stared openly at the kid picking weeds next to Eleanor, an older, toothless woman who’d helped take over the place when Nora admitted she didn’t have the time.

No, she wanted to scream, but yes he was right to steer her away. 

Kellogg said he'd be older than she expected and in that broken piece of his memory she'd been witness to, confirmed that. Not her baby anymore… would he even recognize her?

Shaun…

Nora grabbed John's sleeve as he helped her unsteadily to the house by the mess hall, where a dirty spring mattress looked about as inviting as a king bed coated in Egyptian cotton and down pillows. She was only vaguely aware of John’s hands pulling down her suit, folding her arm over for a needle. Radaway, she figured...here’s hoping she’d pass out before nausea set in. And she did...She slept a day away and woke up to half of the Minutemen stationed down the hill, making food and prepping weapons. 

It took her awhile to remember sending Preston a message when John and she had cleared the edge of The Glowing Sea - asking him to gather enough men to build a machine technologically advanced enough to give her a migraine. She couldn’t recall if she sent Desdemona a message or not, however. Radiation was a better mind wipe than all those illegal chems she’d had to avoid in college.

Laughter and orders rang out across the barn below and meshed down within it all she saw John Hancock with a cigarette hanging out the corner of his mouth, looking frustrated against a stern-faced Preston Garvey, who was talking with his hands. After a few minutes, she watched John say something low - something unpleasant by the looks of it - before flicking his cigarette into an old broken tub and making his way towards her. 

It's not like it matters what she looked like right then. John had seen her at her worst, yet she rushed to the broken vanity in the corner anyways, tried to smooth down her sleep-matter hair and clear the crust from her eyes. She had just enough time to pinch her cheeks into a blush when Hancock opened the rusted door. 

More things to worry about than what she looked like, yet here she was.

There he stood, somehow more put together than herself, smiling warmly at her. All traces of that latent grievance he'd had for Gavey gone. “Mornin’, sunshine. You feelin’ as good as you look I hope.”

Nora swallowed, nodding, “...just a little sore still. I could use a bath.”

John gave her a slow head-to-toe assessment; his smile turning slightly perverse, just as she'd hoped. Yet, hidden away in that lusty look was something fearful. Whatever Preston had said wasn’t good.

“What did Preston say?” she asked, twisting in her chair.

For a second he looked floored, “...nothin’, peaches.”

He stepped further into the room, feigning nonchalance, “Your Railroad friends are on their way. Sent out that message you wanted me to, all without askin’ for anything in return,” he finished off with an insufferable smirk - one that made her smile despite the flutter of nerves at the future ahead of her. The Minutemen and the Railroad? Both in one place...ready to send her into the unknown. Who would have thought?

“Well…” Nora stood and reached forth to finger the lapel of his frock coat, “let’s share a bath and we can talk about some reward, hmm?”

John growled playfully, sliding his hands around to her back, smoothing his thumbs down the tension nestled in her spine. All that odd emotion in him faded away as she ran a finger under his chin. 

“Only tub in this shithole is in the courtyard,” he told her, still grinning lopsided, “not sure I like the idea of washin’ your back with the whole infantry’s tongues a’ waggin’.”

“I’m sure I could talk my way into getting it brought up here. They owe me a bath at least.”

John tightened his arms around her, wrapping her in a secure envelope of warmth; of the scent of sweat and tobacco, “They owe you a helluva lot more than that…”

Wasn’t much to say to in response, she knew. So many people deserved so much better, including him...including her and everyone down in that courtyard. But the world, especially this one, wasn’t fair or just. The people had to make it so. And while she wanted Shaun, she also needed to take the first step to facing the boogeyman...or no one else would.

She donned her sack hood before meeting with Preston down below. Something about the extra cover made her feel less vulnerable and small while the hustle of the troops brought out that anxious bug inside her chest. Despite her back and forth with John he was already ordering some of the recruits around for her bath. It felt a bit selfish when they were all preparing for something so unsure, but if she was going to be the one zapped into oblivion then she figured being a little selfish in this aspect could be forgiven.

“We’ve got enough supplies for the week and Sturges is making way with scrap parts for the teleporter,” Preston told her, looking a little sheepish on the last word, “strange using that word in a literal sense. Didn’t think something like this was even possible.”

“It’s real science fiction,” she muttered through the hood, feeling a nervous sweat build up on her forehead at the thought. That brittle memory of Kelloggs - of watching that courser shot into thin air - spooked her. Nora shifted, glancing over at a chain smoking Hancock, kicking up rocks and growling at anyone that didn’t seem to be up to his standards. Something was bothering him…

The way he’d kissed her earlier hadn’t made much sense either - the strangled way his throat had worked when she’d opened her mouth to him. Like it hurt. 

Nora didn't think about John until later that afternoon. Until he snuck up behind her while she tried to ruined any semblance of thought with the frayed backing on a power junction box. The mess of wires that needed replacing took up most of the mental energy that could have been a panic attack, but John broke that with a cheeky smile wrapped around a cigarette. 

“Ready for that steamin’ bath with your favorite Mayor?” his smile didn't reach his eyes - some unspoken tension she wasn't privy too. He'd tell her in his own time of course, but it bothered her even as she returned his smile.

“Been waiting all my life.”

“Ah, we gotta talk about your standards, peaches,” he joked as they walked up the hill; fingers threaded together like teenagers. As long as her standards always included him she figured she'd manage. Strange that it took a global catastrophe, two hundred years of slumber and a trail of ripe misery to get to him. But she did.

Nora didn't really say much, or give much away, when he closed the door behind them she took the opportunity to pull his frock over his shoulders. That fear peppered his motions as he helped her with her clothes. Dirty, blues and reds making their way to a pile on the bed until they were both naked. His palm, smooth and jagged as it was, skimmed the ball of her shoulder; eyes on the path he stroked with a look of detachment.

“Stop thinking,” she blurted.

John kissed her, maybe partly because he didn’t want to say what was bothering him - maybe to keep from worrying. The future as uncertain as it was fashioned a worried mind but tonight wasn’t time for it. She parted her lips and groaned, dragging him back with a flat hand on his back. A deep seam of scar tissue begged for the soft scrape of her nails, and just as before the touch made him shiver and growl.

“Hell…” he groaned along her lower lip, “you’re a dangerous woman, ain’tcha?”

“So I’ve been told,” she smiled, kissing him softly before tugging him towards the tub, ignoring the chatter from the courtyard leaking in from the cracked windows. If they weren’t careful the whole mess of minutemen would know what she sounded like when John Hancock got his way. But maybe that wasn’t so terrible. 

John threw her a mock grin as they sunk into the water, lingering together for a moment as the steam eased into her sinuses.

They didn’t fuck, but his fingers were never less than greedy and by the time she’d rinsed her hair he was already teasing her inner thighs with a mischievous expression. Nora came with her back plastered against him, rolling her hips into the fast motion of his wrist, splashing water over the porcelain sides; back arched and mouth open. Thankfully soundless, too.

Hancock was better than a strong dose of mentats; better than all the prewar drugs she could ever find. The anxiety just melted away...down the drain so to speak. But it didn’t change anything.

“Garvey told you, didn’t he?” she finally asked when they were half dressed, still damp, in bed, draped over one another.

“Yeah,” he admitted; rasping, “shouldn’t have kept that from me.”

Nora closed her eyes, imagining what could potentially await her. Nothing maybe. Maybe she’d die before seeing Shaun again - die without seeing John ever again. The idea didn’t seem real. None of it did, but she had a feeling that once the machine was towering over her - blotting out the sun - she’d feel the weight of reality crashing down.

“I suppose,” she tried, swallowing, “I guess I thought that...if I didn’t say anything it’d be like it wasn’t real, you know?”

John remained silent beside her, breathing shallow. She swallowed, “Worst case scenario I just disappear. They said if that happens there shouldn’t be any pai-”

“How can ya’ talk like that?” he shut her down, half growling and harsh. 

Nora tensed as he shifted, leaning over her on an elbow, glaring, “You ain’t goin’ anywhere...you’re coming back with that kid of yours. Nothin’ else to talk about, you hear me?”

Her hip throbbed where his hand grabbed her, bruising and possessive. He didn't believe the words he said, that was clear, but she nodded just the same. It’d do no good to dwell on what could happen - what probably would happen. 

While he held her close, black eyes staring expectantly into her own, she relented with a forced smile, “Of course, John.”

It took a solid week for Tinker Tom to utilize the Minutemen recruits and erect that godawful machine. It hummed like a distant volcanic eruption - a sound too similar to that bomb she’d see tap the world two-hundred years ago. More often than not she was dancing around Hancock with fake smiles and lingering touches that they both knew could be a few of their last. It didn’t escape her notice that when he laid down next to her at night and spread her thighs that he wasn’t just fucking her...because she felt the same way. Hard to escape the feeling that the end was near.

The night they finished the teleporter she and Preston lingered by the spit while dinner roasted. She was seeing the sounds crackling up from the flames under the charred leg of stag - too many mentats crashing like waves over the front of her brain. Nora was higher than she’d ever been, running between positive affirmations while Preston tried to run through the plan and then settling on numb silence. The world was awash in floating blobs of blues, dark golds and purples as she coasted along; buzzing.

She didn’t see Hancock anywhere. Though, she was of mind enough to realize she might not have recognized him unless he was standing right in front of her. Too much, maybe, she realized. Before the night was over John would have to flush her out...no way she’d be sober enough for the morning events this way.

“Maybe you should turn in early, General,” Preston offered; a knowing look, but not one of judgment. He understood why she’d want to drown herself in chems, even if he didn’t agree with the ‘poison’ as he called it. The lack of vitriol he had for her was welcome in its own right. Nora could recall quite clearly, despite the chems, his reaction when he found out she’d ‘shacked-up’ with the Mayor of Goodneighbor, whose reputation preceded him among all circles it seemed.

“No,” she slurred, running a few fingers down the side of her face, picking up a sheen of sweat as the touch burned sweetly. Five ‘tats were way too much…

“I’m not tired,” she lied, looking among the darkness of the setting day, searching for that swath of red and telltale plume of cigarette smoke. A little shiver of paranoia tried to throw down in her chest, but the chems took care of that. She still needed to do something else besides stand there; anything else. She needed to work with her hands, keep herself busy so the feeling wasn’t so overwhelming. John might have loved this too-high feeling, but she wasn’t used to it. Chems had always been something she’d used to bring herself back to an even keel. When it tipped over that ‘normal’ state, she wasn’t all that fond of the sensation. But she was scared, more than she ought to have been maybe. 

Everybody died...and she’d already cheated it once. If she died tomorrow then it’d have been overdue. The thought wasn't as comforting as she wished it was, however. 

Nora excused herself, ducking away from a comforting hand that Preston tried to place on her shoulder. She smiled apologetically, still sweating, and fled to the barn where - if she recalled - there was a hunting rifle that needed a new scope. A distraction from the inevitable.

The Barn was dry despite the humidity outside. A rusty fan churned by the workbench, sitting atop a silent radio. Without a thought, Nora turned the dial, cranked the volume and let the shivers of sound rise into the air before her eyes. Who knew mentats could produce mild hallucinations like this, she thought, brimming and spilling with subtle bliss. It was easy to take this feeling and apply it to the meticulous task resting on the weapons bench. 

Shaving the glass was calming and time-consuming. Fitting the bearings just right might have taken hours or minutes, she wasn’t sure, but it felt like the perfect task at the moment. 

Nora was lost in the motions, humming against the radio while the sides of her vision burst with color - lost to the point of no return until she inhaled the reek of burning tobacco.

Hancock…

Nora shifted on her heels, bent over the bench as she was, knowing and feeling where his eyes were. He might have been upset still, may have been higher than she was, busy finding his own distractions, but it was grounding to know that regardless of what could happen tomorrow he still ogled her ass. 

She smirked, blowing metal shavings off her fingers with wet lips, “Hey, Hancock.”

“General,” he growled playfully; lips no doubt sliding the mocking title past a lit cigarette, “Been lookin’ for ya’. Thought you might need a little pick-me-up.”

“Mm,” she thought, swirling around the answer she already knew, peering at him past the ball of her shoulder, “I’ll pass, already treated myself past the point of no return.” He was standing in the doorway, easy on his feet with his shoulders rolled back and a long line of smoke rising off his cigarette.

“That ah’ girl,” he praised. 

She smirked and turned back to the lantern-lit scope between her fingers. The sound of his boots hitting the cement floor made her heart race. Gooseflesh rose up on her arms and legs as he walked into her bubble, breaching it with a strangled sound. She felt his hand on the small of her back a good second before it actually touched her. The warm, heavy weight of it like a hot stone; soaking her through the weaved fiber strands of her vault suit. 

His thumb stroked the dimple just above her rear idly, “What’cha workin’ on?”

Nora shifted, feeling a little itch of heat spark in her gut while his thumb traced the indent of flesh. He knew by now what touching that spot did to her - one of those strange little nerves that did things one wouldn’t expect elsewhere.

“Nothing,” she muttered, feeling the scratchy heat rise up in her cheeks. The mentats were the cause of most of this, but she couldn’t deny John had his ways; sneaky, subtle ways of getting her to bend to his wants. Without words most times.

“You won’t mind if I do this then,” his palm laid flat over her lower back and slid quickly enough down to her backside that she let out a hard breath of air, “will ya’?”

“Hancock,” she sighed, looking back at him. The lantern hanging above the bench that illuminated him made him look much like a monster in a Grognak comic strip and yet she wasn't repulsed like she'd been as a teenager reading those panels in the dark. No, she was far from disgusted. 

He gave her his trademark grin, edged with some loose high she couldn't name. 

“Keep this up, John, and you’ll have to explain to whoever walks in what you're doing feeling up their holier-than-thou General.”

He blinked slowly, sucking in a raw mouthful of smoke, ignoring her. “You smell good enough to eat, ya’ know that?” he rasped, grinding his teeth for emphasis as his palm slid over the slope of her ass, sliding back up at an angle so the heel of his hand pressed against that hot slice of her. 

Nora swallowed before glancing at the barn door; ajar and filtering in light from the campfire outside. Reckless to be sure...but fuck, death could be only hours away for her. Might not be another chance. 

“Why don't you then?” she whispered as if anyone but him could have heard her past the radio still cranking out tunes and colored air. 

John’s throat rumbled like distant thunder. He slid in behind her until his pelvis cupped her backside. Strong, marred hands stroked a hot swath down her hips over her stomach and up to squeeze both her breasts. A delicious heat built down in her belly at the smooth touch and the descending plume of his cigarette smoke. 

In her ear, his hot breath hissed, “Cause there ain’t gonna be a drop left of you when I'm done…”

Nora whimpered, unable not to, as a leak of moisture eased between her thighs. Damn him, but he knew what to say to make her melt. No one had ever talked to her like that before. No one except him. And it'll stay that way, she thought.

She hissed as he pinched her nipple through the blue fabric, bringing it to a hard point. The stab of arousal went deeper now as if she had a black hole inside her that greedily sucked down every little touch and scant caress. Through a blurry haze, she watched his burnt, mangled hand stub out his cigarette in the ashtray by the radio. 

“I'm gonna lick an’ fuck an’ make you come back for more,” he groaned against her spine, dragging his lips up to the back of her neck where she felt him inhale the old hubflower essence from her hair. There, flush against her with both her tits once again in his hands, she heard it, quiet at first...so quiet she thought the soft visual hallucinations had evolved into auditory lies…

But no, he said it again, “...I love you, so fuckin’ much.”

Nora paused as John brushed her hair over her shoulder, burying his face in her sweaty skin, inhaling raggedly. He loved her, she repeated, feeling oddly floored and suddenly very sober. Did he even know what he said, she wondered. A loud, toothy kiss touched the side of her neck - his hot exhaled coming like the gush of a hungry deathclaw. 

“John,” she urged as he molded the weight of her breasts expertly enough that her thighs twitched. A rough pinch silenced her. Hancock slid one hand upwards, wrapping those dexterous fingers around her throat before turning her lips against his own. She kissed him. How could she not? His thin mouth plucked at her own, sucking her lower lip when she gasped for a breath. Something in her suddenly wanted things to be different - she didn't want to be a mother, she didn't want to be a general or even Nora. Just...his…

“Fuck,” he groaned against her mouth, “you don't gotta love me back, just let me have this before ya’ go, please.” 

It wasn't really a request - he was begging her.

She looked at him, saw the shine of the lantern within the black of his eyes. Nora saw herself there, somewhere in the wet shine she saw her reflection and without thinking about being stronger - hiding herself away - she felt the tears come in and couldn't stop herself from smiling. A big dopey smile and a little sob ripped from her throat. 

Poor Hancock, she thought before leaning back in to kiss him soundly. The bastard must have thought she was about to laugh at him from the look he'd had before she took his lips back. But there couldn't be any doubt. He needed to know how she felt. “I-” she swallowed, taking another passionate kiss from him, “I love you too.”

“Well, shit,” he cursed wetly against her. John grabbed her hard around the middle and twisted her. Her backside banged against the metal trim of the bench. A box of nails slipped and fell loudly to the floor but that didn't matter. Nothing but his hands in her hair, his lips on her own and the jagged toss of his hips into hers, mattered. 

Nora groaned, never breaking away from the quick, messy slide of his lips as she sat up on the bench, spreading her thighs for him to step into her; closer and closer.

“Ya’ can't say that,” he kissed her again, tugging her head back by a fistful of her hair; her throat naked for his teeth, “ and not come back, ya’ get me? You come back or I’m gonna eat my gun.”

“I will,” she gasped, and it didn't feel like a lie this time. Whatever it was, John or the mentats, or both, she felt invincible. Nora felt like the world was as much wrapped around her finger as Hancock was - as much as she was wrapped around his. Tomorrow was just another day, but tonight was something special. She felt like her chest might explode…

John bit her lip - hard - and set her on fire.

Nora couldn’t get the vault suit off her fast enough; couldn’t find the slips on his vest buttons without fumbling liked a drunk. Her desperation infected him as well. Her hair snagged as he scratched at the clasp of her bra, growling into her mouth. She slid his frock off, hearing it slide to the dirty ground. He jerked the stretchy material of her suit down around her arms. Her breasts spilled free just as his mouth dipped down to take a nipple between his lips; sucking and nipping and licking until she shivered and cursed.

He must have been as delirious as she was, because when she knocked his tricorner off his head he didn’t even pause against her chest, just sealed his mouth around her and beat his tongue against the tender nub until she bent away from the intensity. “...too much,” she panted, lifting her rear so he could slide the tight material over her hips and down her thighs. 

John released her nipple with a pop, turning her cheeks a sunset red when she caught the sight of the bridge of saliva, illuminated gold, between her breast and his chin. Devilish, she thought, as he grinned up at her before yanking her suit off her ankles, taking her boots with them. To the floor, it all went - his dress shirt with the ruffles, the flag cinching his pants around his hips, her wet underwear...she pressed her calves into his thighs and down his pants went into a pile around his boots.

“Gettin’ ahead of yourself, peaches,” he rasped, tasting the smooth lines of muscle down her back with his scratchy palms. A welcome sense of security clouded her mind as he smiled lovingly at her; eyes holding her own.

“I think we’re right where I want us to be,” she told him honestly, fingering a deep jagged scar down his side, where some of his skin had peeled away with the muscle. Beautifully destroyed, she admired. He was gorgeous in his own, mangled and torn way. Handsome and dashing but not a thing like she could have imagined finding so. Between them she could feel his cock pressed against her cleft and inner thigh, pulsing and throbbing with his heart - the same fast beating she could feel under her palm.

“Naw, not sayin’ this isn’t where I always wanted to be, but I told you I’d drink you to the last drop,” he told her, squeezing her shoulder blades with a sigh of bliss, “and I’m ah’ hungry ghoul…”

A little shock of anticipation struck between her thighs, flooding her body with an anxious warmth. She blinked away the blotches of color that the radio let loose in the air between them and spread her shaking thighs for him as a devious grin spread over his lips. Nora watched him fall to his knees before her with her teeth in her lower lip.

The first little kiss was like a bolt of lightning and the thousand others that followed were like licks of fire swallowing her whole. She groaned, braced her palm on the smooth wood behind her and knocked another heavy box of something to the ground. Whatever it was only made Hancock that more ravenous - the hard sound preceded his tongue sliding up within her, flicking and twisting and pulling more loud sounds out from her throat. 

“John,” she cried; thighs clamping around his head. He’d pulled her clit into his mouth and sucked without mercy. Yea, she tensed, someone had heard that with little doubt, but fuck if she cared and she’d bet her life on tomorrow morning that Hancock didn’t either.

“That’s right, peaches,” he growled against her wet flesh, giving her a long sloppy lick, “keep up the screamin’,” a rough suck and swirl of his tongue, “I want ‘em all to hear this.”

Nora let out a shaky breath, pulled in a ragged lungful of air and let it all out in a bright moan as he went back to his eager task of eating her whole. It was hard to not bite her lip when a sound wanted to come out, but instead, she gave her lower lip a swipe of her tongue and made it louder. It was fun, she realized. The giddy, pleasurable feeling didn't just come from his mouth, or the dirty words he managed to rasp in between licks and bites, it also came from knowing someone was listening to this. She felt this same strange anxiety back at Goodneighbor with those Third Rail patrons listening in while Hancock ran her raw. 

She was close, but Nora didn’t want to come like this. That tickle in her gut that spoke of a lengthy orgasm shouldn't be enjoyed without him. It’d be so much better with Hancock inside her; stretching and pulsing and so fucking close. Quickly, she tilted her hips away and reached down for his jaw. 

John grumbled unhappily. 

“Don’ think so…” he rasped and slid his hands up her hips just to yanked her swollen flesh back into his mouth where he stabbed his tongue inside her ruefully. She could feel his broad grin stretching along her folds and inner thighs.

“I’m c-close, John,” she stuttered; thighs shaking around his feasting mouth. Delicate wet sounds and vulgar moist smacks were making her insides itch. The sounds were igniting the air in front of her eyes with sparks of color. Each one a different pattern - like snowflakes. She was high and only getting higher the more he tended to her.

“Ain’t that the point,” he growled, easing a palm off her hip to sneak two dexterous fingers inside her cunt.

Couldn't argue with that, she knew, holding in a strangled sound as his fingers twisted and curled just as his lips sealed around her clit; a smile evident in the firm pressure. There was no point in fighting it. He was going to make her cum like this come hell or high water and who, really, was she to complain about something like this. Her stomach tensed and her back bowed...the wave crested and there was no warding it off any longer.

A soft, quiet “...oh,” was all that came out of her mouth. 

John snorted and groaned, ate at her and fingered that spot until she was jerking and mewling and sweating and sobbing. The rush came on slow and lasted long enough she was afraid all the blood pouring away from her brain would be the death of her. It made sense that they used to call it the little death.

By the time the feeling started to wane she was looking blearily at a smug Hancock, his ruined cheeks pressed to her inner thigh. Black, narrowed eyes looked up at her and through the fog, she saw his red tongue swiping along his lower lip like the cat that ate the canary.

“Come up here and fuck me,” she ordered.

“No,” he rasped, kissing her cleft, “bend over,” he demanded right back. 

Nora wasted no time, she slid off the bench, twisted around and felt a pang of exhilaration as he grabbed her hips with an iron grip. Then there he was, inside her and deep, without any warning. John fucked her like a feral gone starved; pressing the heel of his hand into her spine when she dared to arch her back. The iron shavings, littering the bench worried at her breasts, rubbing her nipples raw. Nora wondered idly, what her ass looked like - all those little bits of metal eating into the supple flesh while he’d been drinking her dry. Was she bleeding? It was red and raw, had to have been. The idea made her blush; made her insides strangle his thrusting and driving cock. 

“Nora...this one’s for the books,” his voice was more ragged than she’d ever heard it - like he’d been gargling with the metal shavings that were no doubt still stuck to her ass, scratching her stomach and chest mercilessly against the push and pull of his thrusts. She was going to see her boy finally while the tender skin of her front rubbed against her suit...

Hancock’s grip shifted to the globes of her rear end, reigniting a delicious sort of pain on her flesh. 

“Gonna need,” she could hear him stutter and swallow, thrusts faltering slightly, “need some lovin’ after this.”

Nora felt his thumbs slide along her, rubbing away the bits of metal and leaving behind a burning sensation that only made that second climax rush into her lower belly all the faster. His sudden grunt nearly stopped her heart, “Look at this,” he growled, “all red an’ bruised...bouncin’...Christ!”

His palm slammed on the bench beside her, startling her hard enough that her insides clenched hard. A hot exhale landed on the back of her neck and then his fingers were sneaking underneath her, finding the slippery wet flesh he was pounding and pinching that swollen nub until she cried. He must have been close because his fingers worked her hard; rolling and plucking and rubbing until the burn built up and she was coming again.

“Fuck,” John slurred behind her as her inner muscles made waves of pressure around his cock; milking him. And he delivered, she thought ruefully...feeling her nails throb in the wood of the bench. His cock stabbed the back of her, bottoming out until his hips snapped, slowed and met her rear end hard...one last time. Nora could feel that hot gush inside her.

The mentats in her system made the world just another kaleidoscope. Her heart was pounding. Her temples throbbed. The air was alight with color and pulsating lights and shadows. Behind her John was panting; his chest laid out against her back. She could feel his own heart hammering along her spine. It would have been funny for them to fuck each other so hard they died before she even got a chance to jump into that unknown. Yet they were alive and vibrating. Sore and sweaty too, she noted, chuckling breathlessly.

“Somethin’ funny about my near death experience, peaches?” he asked, out of breath but alight with humor, “you outta be...booked for attempted murder…”

“Could say the same about you, Mr. Mayor,” she seethed with delight, feeling oddly vibrant despite how useless her body felt.

“Ah’,” he voiced, curling some of her hair around his finger, knuckles brushing her cheek. She could feel his lips a hair away from the nape of her neck, “keep up that Mayor talk and I’ll hav’ta bend you over the chemstation.”

“Next time,” she promised, letting go a heavy exhale as his cock began to soften inside her. A hot river of cum ran down her inner thigh, making a rash of goosebumps erupt over her arms and legs. There was something so beautifully perverse about that feeling.

“Next time,” he repeated, tracing the corner of her lips until she turned to place a gentle kiss to his thumb, “I’ll hold ya’ too it, love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of those that read, left kudos and wonderful comments on my last chapter. There will be one more full chapter and then a possible epilogue. I couldn't decide if I wanted to leave the end open or not and decided on a happier possibility. 
> 
> Please, if you have time, let me know what you think down below. Also, please forgive any grammatical or spelling mistakes. It's just me here.


	13. Chapter 13

Wasn't much left to do but wait. That kid with the reassuring words and hopeful smiles could go chew a Brahmin’s ass for all John cared. She'd been gone two days and there wasn't a single peep outta any of the Railroads terminals. No spotters word back from any outpost. Not even a gust of the wind with a scent of hope in it.

Nothin’. 

Why hasn't she at least sent them a message sayin’ she was alright? Did she even get there? Was his Nora gone and ain't never comin’ back? How long did he wait until he went out back and gave himself a good ol’ lead sandwich? No point in riding the roller coaster if she wasn't on it with him, he’d decided that the moment she’d shot outta’ sight in a bolt of lightning.

Hancock hadn't moved much from his spot on the front porch since she'd disappeared. The ancient cracked chem cooler beside him hadn't been shut in over forty-eight hours. One after another - after another hit - he let the world inch by like an endless loop of noise. No one down by the busted barn had stopped moving since she'd gone. There was always something to do and might be he should have been down there with them; fixin’ gun barrels and stamping ammunition. But he didn't want to work himself to sleep. When she came back he wanted to be there; watching her zap back into existence. And John wanted to be the first one she saw. 

Selfish, yeah, might have been, was, he admitted, but he loved her and for no good reason it seemed she loved him right back. 

He was going to wait for her...even if he had to stab every vial of psycho he had into his thigh; even if it killed him. He'd sit and wait and hope with a razor's edge of sanity that she'd be back. 

“Evening, Mayor.”

John shifted, ignoring the friendly voice of a one very persistent Preston Garvey. 

How could the kid be so hopeful when there hadn't been a single word from her. From anyone. Not even a synth patrol had shown up. You'd have thought messin’ with Institute tech would have warranted a visit from a drone or somethin’.

“Got some soup,” Preston told him, shifting the large fuzzin’ musket at his side, “one of the recruits baked some bread this morning…” a brief lull into silence and then Preston tried again, “Never a good thing to miss out on some food.”

John lifted his lapel open, plucked out a pack of smokes and lit one by way of saying ‘fuck off’ without actually uttering the words. Nora wouldn't be too happy if she heard he'd been an asshole to the people that worked so hard for her, but he wasn't in the mood for company or food or whatever else Garvey was offering. If Hancock wanted to stew in a plethora of chems and misery then he was damn well going to. Some would say it was the thing he was best at. 

“Well,” Preston muttered awkwardly, “I'll let you know if we hear of anything.”

John snorted loudly, gaining a broken look from the kid before he eventually left. No use trying to make friends when she was gone. He couldn't think past the parasite of fear running around in his gut like some bad brew anyhow. Better if he just wasted away on the high and the suffocating air around him. 

“Nora…” he spoke her name like she was already just another hallucination - like a fanciful dream he'd woken up from. It’d make sense that he'd get a taste of something perfect, somethin’ too good for this world just to have her taken away. The fever he'd cooked himself into didn't last. Eventually, he ran dry and then the booze went the same as the chems and so did his ability to sit still and wait. 

Damned well wasn’t gonna survive the wait if he was sober.

Hancock found himself down in the courtyard where the hustle and bustle of the early morning were in full swing. For the first time since Nora had touched him, he yearned for his old haunt - for that sharp reek of Goodneighbor and all his people. Here he wasn't anything but another set of shaky hands. 

“What about the time they ran through that Military Outpost back near Quincy? Heard there'd been three dozen gunners in power armor.”

John pushed a bent cigarette between his teeth - tongue to the tip - and listened while he sat in a lawn chair, stuffing gunpowder in expunged cylinder caps. 

“That girl at Abernathy’s said they were fightin’ over a pit ah’ crabs too. Must have been a real shock when they popped outta the ground.”

Wasn't how it was, John remembered. That day it had been rainin’ and she'd been only a new dream to him then. Seemed so long ago now. Those days had been stocked full of dirty daydreams and of him sneakin’ looks at her ass when she crouched for cover. It was still a wonder he hadn't gotten a bullet between his eyes for all the awareness he had outside her delicious backside. But that was back before he'd gotten a taste of what she really was. 

Now he missed her. Just her…

That particular sound to Garvey's strides crunched towards him. Coming up behind him should have been illegal, John mused, inhaling a heavy drag of smoke only to turn his head and expel it through his open nostrils; black stare narrowed at a creepin’ Preston. 

“Whatda ya’ need?” John asked, as even and cordial as ever. Years of meetin’ with caravan heads and so called contacts made him acceptable at this sorta shit. 

“Just thought you might want some company,” Preston said, offering a hesitant smile. 

To this John shrugged. He had bigger concerns than trying to shake the kid. He'd been bingeing chems and liquor for three straight days and ain't no amount of avoiding Preston was gonna replenish the supply. Hancock was in for a rough stint if the next caravan didn't bring with ‘em something real strong. He should have thought this little pity party out better. Now, when Nora came back, she'd find him in the throes of withdrawal. 

Not a pretty sight, especially on a user as hard as he was and an ugly ghoul to boot. 

“You got any chems stashed away I don't know about, Garvey?” John asked around a breath of smoke, letting the dregs creep out the sides of his mouth, hoping it looked menacing enough to get him spillin’ his hiding place. 

They had medics with them. Medics meant chem stashes. 

“I could spare some addictol, but the rest is for necessity,” his smile widened; eyes crinkling, “wouldn't want the General to come back with some bumps and bruises and not have any medicine for her.”

Hancock hadn't thought about that. That little iota of hope was struggling to breathe against a sudden heavy rain of loathsomeness. Way to make him feel less than nothing, John thought, staring down between his bent knees at a wet patch of grass...mind running raw and then blank. 

What had he been thinkin’ when he decided to up and empty his whole stash? Trying to off himself without pullin’ the trigger? Maybe, but the truth might have been worse. Might be he wasn't all that far removed from John McDonough - the useless junkie - after all. Nora deserved better than that. 

“Hey,” Preston offered, hushed and sincere, no doubt mistaking his self-loathing for worry, “it hasn't been all that long. Give her some credit.”

“Yea,” John breathed; painful and tight and laced with an open fear that no chem could blot out, “I'll take that addictol...right about now.”

He slept that night but it was more tossing and turning than anything, ripping himself outta sleep for fear that she'd popped back into existence without him there waitin’ for her. It kept him strung out despite having shaken the withdrawals with Garvey’s help. Nothin’ like the prewar chems to fix a real good jitter. Must have created such a thing for the dope-sick soldiers on the front lines before the whole world turned into the front line. 

Worked like a charm, he mused around a cigarette, staring at the cracked ceiling as he laid up in bed; early morning light creepin’ up over the hill and through the trees. The chaos below had finally died down. People were sleeping now, going about their usual like nothin’ happened. 

Hancock blew out a stream of smoke, dug his bare scalp back into the softness of Nora's pillow and let his eyes fall closed. He missed her - missed her like he never missed his looks or his brother or even the chems. She was a part of whatever made him ‘him’. And she wasn't here and it ate at him like the radiation never could. 

The cracks on the ceiling curled like lattice work...it reminded him of being laid up in this exact spot with Nora rocking in his lap; workin’ his cock inside her with nothing but a warm smile on her face, panting his name every other breath like it was some old world prayer...

What was he gonna do without her? Mayoral duties sounded more than dull after being out with her for so long. 

John thought about a future without Nora - one where he spent his spare time stuck in a memory lounger like Kent, just getting more soft in the head off the fumes from the past. Reliving every moment with her but always coming up knowing she'd been just a memory all along. Going to bed alone. Wantin’ her soft skin to stroke and knead. Needin’ her. 

On the fourth day John did the one thing he hadn't done since he'd been a kid. He cried. He barricaded himself up in the cabin, locked the door and shoved himself in the corner. No booze. No chems. Just a deep stabbing pain in his chest and the very real, very terrifying thought that she might be dead and gone and forever outta reach. 

He hadn't even cried when his brother slaughtered all those ghouls. Didn't shed a tear when Vic and his gang beat that drifters face into the wet cement. John wasn't the cryin’ type. Just a user; a junkie and the best thing in his life was gone. 

The world eventually faded into night. Another day passed. And John simmered with a pounding head from the sobbin’ and panic. His stomach rumbled with hunger and his eyes itched with dried up tears. In that little corner with an empty pack of smokes crumpled in his lap, he let a bone-heavy sleep creep in and somewhere, a part of him hoped he didn't wake up. 

He dreamt about waking up to Nora in his arms, shakin’ him awake...sometimes kissing him until he regained consciousness and every time he thought she was back, but then he’d shake off the sleep and he'd be alone. Eventually this circle repeated itself enough that when he opened his eyes to the darkness, hearing a shuffle in the short distance, he thought nothing of it and let sleep pull him back down, hoping that the next time he woke up the sun would be up and she’d have been just another long lost memory.

‘John…’

He shifted, pulled his knees up to his chest and willed the hallucination away. 

“...John,” a whisper and a close warmth against his shoulder. A gentle pressure pressed against his arm; thumb rubbing into a hard, tense muscle. He took in a tired breath at the very real feeling, a bit shaken from the weird night and the even more tortuous dreams. There in the darkness was her. It was her - or if she was just another half-dreamt vision then she was a damn good one. Even got the light dusting of freckles over her nose just right. 

“What are you doing on the floor, John...it's cold down here.”

“Fuck,” he cursed; throat dry and sore. She was real. Fuckin’ alive and breathin’ and...bleedin’?

“What happened?” he rasped; throat sore and useless.

Her brows furrowed, suddenly lookin’ her age. Like a statue wore down from the stressors around it. Whatever fresh hell she'd been through, she came out of it in one piece it would seem. No one - not even the Institute - could replicate her this well. There was a disgusting thought that flashed before him - one that made him sick - that, if she were just a synth, he’d take her over nothing. 

“It’s a long...long story, John, and I haven’t slept or stopped since they sent me back,” her voice trailed into a strangled-soundin’ breath before he felt her warm palm cup his jaw. The heat of her breath gushed over his mouth, “I just need to lie down with you for now...I’ll tell you everything in the morning.” Her lips scraped against his own; chapped and salty to the taste, but it felt more indescribable than any life-affirming chem trip. Nora was tired - parts of her were flaky with blood and sore to the touch, but John couldn’t help pulling her between his legs, cupping her backside to nestle her into the empty spots of his body and kiss her all the harder. She was alive and she was here...with him. 

What had he done to deserve her? Only good he’d ever done was brought about by killin’. It didn’t make sense that any of it would get him in good with whatever being dished out the karma.

Hancock wrapped his arms around her, and even though she groaned in pain he felt her arms snake around his thin waist and hold him just as tightly; lips slanting and parting against his own. All that pain and heartache melted away.

“Nora,” he sighed, peeling her desperate lips off his when the warm wet of tears started to smear over his cheeks. They were from her...not him this time. Might be he was all dried up from the night, but he was just too relieved to do much else but stroke her bare arms and remind himself this was real and she was real and it ended just as he’d hoped it would. 

“I can’t…” she sniffed, fisting his coat at his back, staring inside him with those shining orbs, “can’t believe I’m here. I-it seems like a bad dream.” A sweaty crease highlighted between her brows, as though she was at a loss for words, but words didn’t matter right now.

“Hey, love,” he rasped - low and reassuring - as he stroked a gnarled thumb over her perfect little chin, “you don’t gotta sell me on the nightmare, but you’re here now. We got all day tomorrow to worry, not tonight. You and I ain’t dreamin’.”

In his palm she nodded, tears slipping down her cheeks, cleaning away paths of dirt and sweat...and dried blood most like. John had enough sense through the levitating glow of relief to slip the needle of a stim into her thigh while she was getting into bed, only hissing loud enough that he could hear her. The stim staunched the aches it seemed. 

As he got in bed beside her it was clear she’d gone boneless; limbs like jelly and head lolling under the bounce of the box spring as he moved up on his elbow to watch over her. 

Hancock’s eyes skimmed over her form, taking in the changes over the past several days. 

She was bruised and battered. Her vault suit had been ripped, maybe beyond repair. The sleeves were cinched around her waist, exposing the thin blood-stained tank top underneath. Under the moonlight, he could make out the shadows made from her erect nipples under the cloth. Though his finger itched to stroke the hard buds of flesh he kept that little urge down easily enough. The giddy, excited energy making his heart race wasn’t lust. John didn’t have a word for it, but that was all fine and dandy as long as it didn’t morph into the depression and panic he’d been experiencing until just now. Fuck the world if anything happened to her while he was still alive and kickin’.

There was a dirty strip of cloth tied around her calf and the nails on her toes were stained dark red. She needed a bath and some more chems. Badly, he grimaced.

The broken-paneled alarm clock read a quarter past two. Plenty of time in the darkness to take care of her. She was dead to the world anyway and when he slid out of bed - the springs screaming - her eyelids didn’t even flutter. Nora made not a single reaction to his actions. 

John removed her tank, carefully making sure the knotty ropes of her hair didn’t get caught in the straps. Her vault suit peeled off like scabby skin, bringing old patches of blood and dirt with it. 

She stank of blood and exertion, but dammit she was here with him. 

Nora roused awake halfway through his cleaning of her, midway down her stomach with a damp rag. Her eyes watching him dreamily from her limp position on the bed and then, carefully, she spoke, “I remember when I was pregnant with Shaun...and I was sick, really...really sick, John…”

John paused, taking a seat on the edge of the bed beside her; a warm palm on her naked hipbone. Whatever painful memories she had to get off her chest he’d listen, fuck knew she’d listened to his tale of woe and want many times over.

“...I couldn’t keep anything down. Threw up all the time, so Nate sprung the funds for a nurse to take care of me...even though he was home. On leave from the war. But he didn’t want to take care of me himself, so he paid someone else to do it.”

Hancock frowned, leaning over her on the bed, watching her lips thin sadly. “Ain’t no amount of mess you can make that’d turn my stomach, peaches,’ he told her, “No bed of caps at my disposal that’d make me wanna give the privilege to anyone else either.”

Her lips twitched - those full lips that puckered when he told some raunchy joke or made a sly move - they eventually curled into a short smile as he gazed down at her. Sentiment; it was a good thing she liked it, coming from an ugly ghoul like him, cause he couldn’t help spillin’ it.

Nora’s eyes closed, her lips parting in something like comfort despite the shallow wound he’d uncovered on her calf, leaking slowly. He laid the damp cloth over the cut, cleaning away the blood as he watched her eyebrows twitch gently in pain. The rest of her wasn’t hard to clean. Her toes weren't as raw as he’d feared and that open callous on her ankle was fine after he cut away the cleaved skin. Once he was done - rinsing the grime off the rag in a small bucket - she appeared beside him, on her knees and huffing. 

John leaned back to watch her scrub between her thighs and under her arms; weak motions but persistent and not without a set line to her jaw that said she’d rather die than fall back asleep dirty.

“Could ‘ave gotten that for ya, love,” he rasped, grinning as he pressed a cigarette between his teeth, “all ya’ had to do was ask.”

“There are some things…” she paused for a breath, obviously exhausted, “you just have to do on your own.”

Hancock shrugged a shoulder, unable to ignore the soft bounce of her naked breasts while she scrubbed away. In all honesty, he still felt like this could all be some anguish-induced dream. Might be his fear of waking up with her just being a phantom was what had kept him awake in the first place and he’d used her state of disarray as some excuse to keep himself busy. It felt like he’d done enough sleeping the past several days, whether he’d been awake or not.

A wet slap roused him away from the soak of nicotine - of stale tobacco leaking out his open nostrils while he fought off another round of anxiety. Nora was real. If she’d been a teasing dream there’d have been much less cleaning and more dirtying. 

Nora gave him a lowered look, pressing her shoulders against the bed frame, legs lined out over the floor. Her fingers were tracing raised water stains on the wooden surface; eyes watching him carefully. It didn’t escape John’s notice that there was something broken in her gaze, but also something truly alive.

“Feelin’ lighter now, peaches?” he asked, sucking in a lung full of poison.

“Feeling something,” she whispered into the thick air between them...and then she was crawling towards him, obviously tired and sore and still slightly damp under his needy touch from the water. 

A gentleman like him ought to have taken her back to bed, laid her down and given her a kiss goodnight, not help her weak little fingers with the knot around his hips. Certainly, a good man wouldn’t have been as rock solid as he was when she finally got her perfect hand down his pants, but he was and damn it all...they both needed this. 

“I know what you’re about to say,” he heard her in the ruined mess of his right ear; breath so hot he felt like sweatin’, “and I’ll have to disagree…”

“What?” he groaned, ruefully as he could with his smoke dangling out the corner of his mouth and her warm palm workin’ his cock, “you a mind reader now?”

“This is what people in love do when they’ve been apart for too long, Hancock, they fuck and worry about the rest of the world in the morning.”

Couldn’t argue with that, he thought, or at least gave it a helluva shot as her slick thumb gave the slit of his cock a good swipe. That right there made him shiver - made the smoke drop off his lower lip to the floor, where it tried it’s best to burn but died just like his resolve. Who was he to deny a woman her need when he was pretty damn certain her time away from him was worse than his time away from her?

Nora straddled his thighs without any warning, gave him a soft kiss that tasted of something raw and tangy and then he was clenching his teeth as her tight warmth slipped around his cock; pulling him in. She was burning, maybe feverish...but she felt so good. So many days of pain and heartache and sobriety and now he was being given a shot of euphoria damn near better than what ruined his face all those years ago. 

“...fuckin’ hell, Nora,” he groaned, resting his uneven forehead along the line of her shoulder. It felt like he hadn’t been touched in years - only now given a taste of true intimacy. She was so soft and sure and warm and tight...and eager. 

Her hips rocked back and forth, sluggish and uneven but there was an urgency to it that was infectious. Right there on the musky floor they bucked and grunted; cursing and grabbing until he was sure she was bruised up worse than the road did to her. Furious fingers raced down his scalp, gripping the back of his neck; holding on like a loose leaf in a storm. John threw his hips up into her, felt the weight of her breasts brushing in the frills of his dress shirt and braced as the end came crashin’ down. 

“I’m cummin’”, he groaned, digging his fingers into her spine. He wanted to give her something nice - somethin’ that could drive away the aches and pains and mask it all like a good hit but his sac tightened and that sharp stab got deeper. The fast, jagged toss of her hips didn’t falter either and when the feeling hit the peak and he spilled it all inside her, she only moaned quietly…

“...John,” she whispered - a stray hiccup leaking out of her throat as he growled and bucked; slamming deeper and deeper as he came. All that pain seemed like a bad dream as the pleasure swam into his stomach. Nora, just like a needle full of med-x, took it all away.

He was pretty sure she didn’t get anything outta that one, but he couldn’t help it. Normally, John would have made sure to lay her back and coax something real sweet outta her, but instead, he hugged her close, breathin’ in the thick scent of her hair. Strong pulses under his chin, where he rested it on the juncture of her neck and shoulder reminded him once again that she was alive. Her heartbeat; fast but even.

“I’ve resolved nothing, John,” she told him, softly and barely coherent; her fingers still hard up in his neck and shoulder.

“Not yet,” he argued, coming back from the dopamine hit she gave him. Her lips were parted, panting but there was no smile or gleeful expression like he wanted from her. With no small effort, he shook off the sleepy weight from his orgasm and slid his softening cock out from her, tilting her hips back as she sighed. 

Hancock laid her down in bed, just like he should have done to start with. 

“What I did...I created-”

“Hey, now,” he hushed her, thumbing her lower lip as it quivered softly. John dared to give her frown a kiss before he spread her thighs and dipped down for a taste of her. She was sloppy, all thanks to him, but that didn’t bother him. Those determined little sounds went silent, replaced by a few soft sounding moans as he curled his tongue in just the right spots. Must have gotten Nora closer to the brink than he’d thought, ‘cause it didn’t take long before she was rolling her hips up, gasping and then shakin’ with the climax. 

“That’s it, peaches,” he rasped, giving her another firm lick before sucking the hard bead of flesh between his thin lips; slow and gentle as she rode out the waves. When her thighs stopped shaking he gave her sweet cunt a goodbye kiss and leaned back to find her eyes closed and a small smile on her flushed, sweaty face. “Nothin’ but sleep now or there’ll be hell to pay, you feel me?”

Nora nodded, chin to her chest, eyes still closed as her lashes danced on her cheeks. Beautiful...too much sometimes it hurt to look at her, knowing what he looked like now. Even in his prime, she’d have been out of his reach...who knew what she really saw in him. But he didn’t question it as she blindly searching for him, fingers hitting the collar of his shirt and pulling him down beside her.

“Please,” she breathed against his throat as he settled down beside her, “don’t leave me…”

“Ain’t no way that’s happening, love. Not even if they burned down the world all over again.”

He slept after that, hopin’ and prayin’ she’d be there when he woke up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait on this. I have a short epilogue chapter halfway done as of this post. Soon the end will be the true end! At long last. Please, if you have the time leave a comment down below. And as always, thank you for reading, commenting and leaving kudos.


	14. Epilogue

“What do you think about this one?” she tried, holding it up to the mid-morning light pouring in from the stone window, blinking against the glare.

“You tryin’ to kill or maim with that there, peaches?”

Nora gave it a look, frowned and picked up another, feeling its sleekness between her fingers. What did violence have to do with anything? It was just-

“Damn,” he exclaimed. The smoke between his lips hung on by a thread of spit. “Now that’ll do some ‘real’ damage.” He looked pleased. That was bad in a case like this, Nora mused, looking back down at it in her hands, wondering what fresh hell he could imagine being wrought with something like this.

“You think?” she eyed it further; critically of course. Was the sole purpose of this sort of thing to wreak as much havoc as possible, though? She wasn't sure anymore. It had been so long she forgot this was even a concern anymore. Maybe she'd throw him a bone and just have John pick it out for her. There were too many to choose from after all. He liked to think himself an expert at this anyhow, she grinned - or so it would seem.

“Why don’t you find one ‘you’ like then?” she parried with a thin expression that tried hard to hold back a smile.

“Sweetheart,” he drawled, “...peaches, Nora,” he smirked that dashing, lovable tilt, “you know if I picked it there’d be pure anarchy in the streets. We ain’t come this far for me to reduce ‘em all to ferals in one evenin’.”

Right about that, she figured, throwing it on the bed with the others, though it didn't escape her notice how his eyes followed it into the pile. This shouldn’t have been such a problematic decision, though, why it was she could only speculate. And for a man that already had her eating out of his palm, he was being quite flattering...too flattering one might think.

“That bein’ said,” he continued.

There it was. Nora laid a palm over her cocked hip as he tapped his smoke in a nearby ashtray, looking devilishly perverse in the low lighting, “I always wanted to fuck a dame in a red dress.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” she mused idly, watching him kick his legs up on the bed frame with an air of pure, aloof pleasure. Hancock was just trying to get a rise out of her, knowing Mags wore red and recalling his little confession about being smitten with her in the early days of his Mayoral duties. Thankfully she hadn’t been as infatuated with this smug ghoul as she was now when he told her such or she might have had a little one-sided rivalry to tend with.

After a few minutes, Nora started to feel the slow saccharine dance of the mentats she'd popped that afternoon, calming those nerves that shouldn’t have been there in the first place, “I assumed these problems were as dead as the grass.”

“Elaborate,” he grunted, lighting up another cigarette with a flick of his wrist and cup of the hand; eyes hot on her at the side of the bed. He hadn’t been looking anywhere else all afternoon, well except at the dress that is.

“Women,” she complained, picking up the short black number for the third time already, “we’d spend hours getting ready for parties, balls...galas…you name it. But that was when there was nothing else to fuss over. This just seems - it’s out of place in this world. I thought it wouldn’t matter.”

“When you bring down the boogeyman, I’d say that calls for some fine celebrations even if they’re long overdue. But hey, if it’s a tough sell, just think about the afterparty,” John went on, bouncing the smoke between his lips with the tip of his tongue, “you wear that red little thing and I guarantee you ya’ won’t know up from down once I’ve had my way.”

Nora couldn’t help but smile. The threat was tempting after all, more so than he might have meant it. They could have fooled around now - now that they were finally alone after everything, but part of the fun was dragging it out. Just the way she walked around the Castle that day, putting an extra sway to her hip. She even made him walk right into a frazzled Preston Garvey by leaning over the radio desk at the perfect moment. Turning around to see him looking spooked with a bent cigarette in his mouth was worth the unresolved tension.

She thought about tonight; about possibly having a few hours to themselves. That raw, giddy rush of anticipation decided it for her. It was exciting to feel it again with such a pleasurable outcome rather than the possibility of death and nonexistence being the end result.

“Red one it is then. How can I refuse?” she teased, feeling breathless.

“Simple,” John grinned, “but that’s one of the things I love about ya’, you got a ghoul fetish and just can’t bare the thought of passin’ up on some of this di-”

Without warning the door slammed open. A loud bang on the stone wall and a piercing screech in the rusty hinges. Nora jerked and John’s feet slid off the bed frame, slapping his soles on the floor. They both looked down at a flustered Shaun, gasping with exertion; cheeks a ruddy pink.

“I need to hide!” he chirped, twisting and kicking the door shut, darting past the both of them and promptly scrambling under the bed. 

Nora cast a wide-eyed look at John, who only chuckled deeply at the expression he must have seen on her face. Both of them could hear the running steps outside their door, disappearing down the hallway until the only sound in the room was Shaun's deep breathes and John’s loud smirk.

“What have you done?” Nora asked, or more like demanded as John’s smile grew wider and more smug, throwing his boots back up on the frame like some audience member.

“I didn’t do nothin’,” came the voice from under the bed, full of woe and conviction and broken slang.

“You mean ‘I didn’t do anything’,” she corrected, nudging the bed frame with her bare toes, “come on, get out from under there before you find something you shouldn’t.”

“Gross…”

John laughed, a bark of sound before stubbing out his cigarette, “Your Mom just means guns, kid...don’t get too spooked.”

Shaun slid out from under the bed, putting an elbow on the mattress before scanning the room and then the pile of dresses over the bed, “What are you both doing anyways?” he asked, this time, less like the mini John Hancock he seemed to strive to be...right down to the clipped words and red jacket he hadn’t taken off since he found it. 

Nora opened her mouth, but it was John who answered him, “Tryin’ to help your Mom pick out a dress for tonight. Whada'ya say about that red one there?” He nodded over to the one, half hanging off the bed - the one that Shaun reached out for, unfurled and proceeded to scrutinize.

“Kinda...empty,” Shaun declared, looking back over at her with a weird look. John’s brow arched; black bottomless eyes darting over to her in question.

“He means low-cut,” Nora offered, taking the dress from Shaun to throw it back in the pile, “and he might be right about that. I’ll just wear this one.” Which was the one Shaun snatched out of her hands with the nimble fortitude one saw in a pickpocketer. She wasn’t sure if she was proud or annoyed, but Shaun gave that one a quick inspection before making a crinkled face at it and throwing it back on the bed.

“You should wear the red one, that one’s too short,” he declared, looking at John as if for approval in his decision. The ghoul laid his palm out with a shit-eating grin, and Nora had to watch with narrowed eyes as they both exchanged low-fives like a couple of teenagers. This made Shaun all the more proud of his decision.

John gave her one of his renown looks that promised all the spoils in the world and she realized quickly that this was a losing argument. 

“Fine,” she said simply, bundling up all the dresses but the red one into a pile before stuffing them into a moldy drawer, never to see the light of day again, “I hope you ‘boys’ are pleased with yourselves.”

“Immensely,” John rasped, patting Shaun on the shoulder with a sly expression, “ we make ah’ damn good team, don’t we, kid?”

Shaun just nodded; smitten. Nora tried not to smile, but it was hard. Nothing happened like she’d hoped it should - not like she’d planned, but somehow that didn’t matter. Life was good and despite it all she was alive. John was alive and she had a piece of Shaun back...and now she had to wear this fucking dress…

“Catch ya’ later,” John called as a galloping Shaun sped past her, on to his next adventure. She didn’t even grind him for what chased him into their room to start with...some mother she was.

“I think that went well, love,” he rasped smugly, threading his fingers behind the back of his neck, raising his chin in triumph. She’d get him back. One way or another. She always got him back eventually. He seemed to know the workings of her mind, at least by now he did and he seemed nonplussed by his findings. Might be he relished them, but she couldn’t fault him there. The idle threats about the dress made her loss over the black one easier to bear if she could even count the debacle as a loss at all. 

“Well enough,” she mumbled, taking a seat on the screeching mattress; fingers tracing the light seams in the dress, “What are you going to wear?”

“You’re lookin’ at it,” he told her, spreading his arms wide with a lopsided smirk, gesturing to his usual, dashing ensemble. It was hard to fuck with perfection, she figured, grinning despite herself.

“I suppose we’ll be hard to tell apart then, won’t we?” 

Hancock scoffed loudly, snorting for added effect, “We’ll see who's gettin’ eye fucked the most tonight, and it ain’t gonna be me.”

“Keep carrying yourself this way,” she teased, running her gaze down his lanky frame, taking in all he was and more, “and I’ll be doing more than eyeing you, Mr. Mayor.”

“Ah,” he hissed happily, “yeah, just like that. ‘Member that when I’ve got ya’ hitched up on that wall behind ya tonight. I like the way that sounds...a little roleplay never hurt anyone. We could pretend it's just you an’ me, back in my office before the Bobbie fiasco.”

Nora tried to hide her smile as she picked up some scruffy heels, “You wanted to fuck me that bad even then?”

“Come now, give me a little credit,” he feigned hurt, “I was thinkin’ up ways to made you squirm before you were even exchangin’ words with our old friend Finn.”

“I'm not surprised,” she mused, tossing her boots back under the bed before throwing him a rather dangerous look. 

“Can you blame me?” John asked her, snubbing out his smoke in the golden ashtray by the table; the table littered with papers and contracts that had gone ignored for days already. Nora imagined John wiping the surface clean before throwing her on it; mouth ravishing her with a relentless glee. Maybe they could play pretend after all...the state of this room wasn't much better than his office was, maybe a few less empty shooters of jet but roughly the same. A couple well-placed lanterns and her old vault suit and that would set the scene rather well...

“I suppose I can't blame you too much,” she replied eventually, threading a few fingers through her hair. If she was going to get ready for a celebration then she might as well go all out. If this night was supposed to go as well as she hoped then the fuss was worth it. No one brought down the boogeyman every day, John had told her and he was right even if he made it hard to admit that sometimes. 

“So,” Hancock drawled, “you gonna let me help you into that thing or what?”

Nora peered back at him over her shoulder, watched him as smoke curled out the corner of his mouth, saw the soft gaze he pinned her with and couldn’t help but nod. Of everyone else in the world, John was the one who gave her everything she loved and cherished now. From the semblance of comfort to Shaun and to himself. She owed him a depth of gratitude...so if he wanted to help her into some clingy, red dress then by all means, as long as he helped her out of it later.

“Sure thing, John,” she smiled, “do whatever you'd like.”

“Peaches, I’ve been waitin’ my whole life to hear you say that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we have it. Thank you to everyone that has been reading this to the end. And thank you to those that left kudos and for all the wonderful comments along the way. This has been a very fun one to write. So expect more from these two in the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr ----> http://brimbrimbrimbrim.tumblr.com/


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